| THE COMPLETE GILBERT & SULLIVAN OPERA GUIDE Alan Jefferson New York: Facts On File, 1984 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-87196-857-9 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-87196-857-6 | 352pp. | HC/LF/FCI | $29.95 | |
The Introduction includes biographical sketches of these two famous British collaborators on comic opera (respectively, librettist and composer). William Schwenk Gilbert was born on 18 November 1836 in London. He was by all accounts demanding and irascible, apt to deliver sharp words to anyone who displeased him.
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"A true enfant terrible, he risked his reputation by showing off and making outrageously provocative statements in public, and this tactlessness so offended the Establishment (sic) that his long awaited knighthood was never bestowed on him by Queen Victoria." *
* * At times he imagined that Sullivan was his worst enemy, with an idée fixe that the composer was putting up barriers of music between his words and the audience. This was far from true." – Pages 13 & 16 |
Arthur Seymour Sullivan was born on 13 May 1842 in Lambeth, South London. His family was musical, and he showed a talent in that area early. His fine soprano voice and engaging personality earned him at age ten a place in the Chapel Royal Choir. He went on to the Royal Academy of Music and studied in Leipzig, where he hobnobbed with classical music luminaries such as Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann. He became known, the author tells us, as "England's leading composer conductor."
"The culmination of his musical education came in 1866 with a festival of his own music, including a symphony, which clearly proved that he had 'arrived'. Academicians tipped him as the next Master of the Queen's Musick and everyone was convinced of the importance of this magnetic personality, so well endowed with social and musical gifts." – Page 16 |
Gilbert and Sullivan, often at odds because of the former's temperamental nature, would have earned little fame but for their business manager Richard D'oyly Carte (real name Richard Doyle McCarthy.) A successful impresario, he managed the Royalty Theatre in Soho which specialized in burlesques and operattas. Gilbert and Sullivan were under contract to him, along with many performers and crew. D'oyly Carte raised the money and backers and in 1881 built the Savoy Theatre where Gilbert and Sullivan staged their operas. All three became wealthy men.
As well as many pictures and the libretti of all nineteen operas, each preceded by an Introduction and a Synopsis, the book includes a note on the history of productions at the Savoy and a Selected Bibliography of thirty entries. The pictures are credited in the Acknowledgements, and there is a good index. For fans of Gilbert & Sullivan, this book is a treasure trove: definitely a keeper.
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