First collaborations Thespis '' of 6 January 1872 In 1871, producer
John Hollingshead brought Gilbert and Sullivan together to produce a Christmas entertainment,
Thespis, at his
Gaiety Theatre, a large West End house. The piece was an
extravaganza in which the classical Greek gods, grown elderly, are temporarily replaced by a troupe of 19th-century actors and actresses, one of whom is the eponymous
Thespis, the Greek father of the drama. Its mixture of political satire and
grand opera parody mimicked
Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld and
La belle Hélène, which (in translation) then dominated the English musical stage.
Thespis opened on
Boxing Day and ran for 63 performances. It outran five of its nine competitors for the 1871 holiday season, and its run was extended beyond the length of a normal run at the Gaiety, but no one at the time foresaw that this was the beginning of a great collaboration. Unlike the later Gilbert and Sullivan works, it was hastily prepared, and its nature was more risqué, like Gilbert's earlier
burlesques, with a broader style of comedy that allowed for improvisation by the actors. Two of the male characters were played by women, whose shapely legs were put on display in a fashion that Gilbert later condemned. The musical score to
Thespis was never published and is now lost, except for one song that was published separately, a chorus that was re-used in
The Pirates of Penzance, and the Act II ballet music. The number of pianos manufactured in England doubled between 1870 and 1890 as more people began to play
parlour music at home and more theatres and concert halls opened.
Trial by Jury In 1874, Gilbert wrote a short
libretto on commission from producer-conductor
Carl Rosa, whose wife would have played the leading role, but her death in childbirth cancelled the project. Not long afterwards,
Richard D'Oyly Carte was managing the
Royalty Theatre and needed a short opera to be played as an afterpiece to
Offenbach's
La Périchole. Carte knew about Gilbert's libretto for Rosa and suggested that Sullivan write a score for it. Gilbert read the piece to Sullivan in February 1875, and the composer was delighted with it;
Trial by Jury was composed and staged in a matter of weeks. 's engraving of the original production of
Trial by Jury The piece is one of Gilbert's humorous spoofs of the law and the legal profession, based on his short experience as a
barrister. It concerns a
breach of promise of marriage suit. The defendant argues that damages should be slight, since "he is such a very bad lot," while the plaintiff argues that she loves the defendant fervently and seeks "substantial damages." After much argument, the judge resolves the case by marrying the lovely plaintiff himself. With Sullivan's brother,
Fred, as the Learned Judge, the opera was a runaway hit, outlasting the run of
La Périchole. Provincial tours and productions at other theatres quickly followed. Fred Sullivan was the prototype for the "
patter" (comic)
baritone roles in the later operas.
F. C. Burnand wrote that he "was one of the most naturally
comic little men I ever came across. He, too, was a first-rate practical musician.... As he was the most absurd person, so was he the very kindliest...." Fred's creation would serve as a model for the rest of the collaborators' works, and each of them has a crucial
comic little man role, as Burnand had put it. The "patter" baritone (or "principal comedian", as these roles later were called) would often assume the leading role in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas, and was usually allotted the speedy
patter songs. After the success of
Trial by Jury, Gilbert and Sullivan were suddenly in demand to write more operas together. Over the next two years, Richard D'Oyly Carte and Carl Rosa were two of several theatrical managers who negotiated with the team but were unable to come to terms. Carte proposed a revival of
Thespis for the 1875 Christmas season, which Gilbert and Sullivan would have revised, but he was unable to obtain financing for the project. In early 1876, Carte requested that Gilbert and Sullivan create another one-act opera on the theme of burglars, but this was never completed.
Early successes The Sorcerer Carte's real ambition was to develop an English form of light opera that would displace the bawdy
burlesques and badly translated French
operettas then dominating the London stage. He assembled a syndicate and formed the Comedy Opera Company, with Gilbert and Sullivan commissioned to write a comic opera that would serve as the centrepiece for an evening's entertainment. Gilbert found a subject in one of his own short stories, "The Elixir of Love", which concerned the complications arising when a love potion is distributed to all the residents of a small village. The leading character was a
Cockney businessman who happened to be a sorcerer, a purveyor of blessings (not much called for) and curses (very popular). Gilbert and Sullivan were tireless taskmasters, seeing to it that
The Sorcerer (1877) opened as a fully polished production, in marked contrast to the under-rehearsed
Thespis. While
The Sorcerer won critical acclaim, it did not duplicate the success of
Trial by Jury. Nevertheless, it ran for more than six months, and Carte and his syndicate were sufficiently encouraged to commission another full-length opera from the team.
H.M.S. Pinafore Gilbert and Sullivan scored their first international hit with
H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), satirising
the rise of unqualified people to positions of authority and poking good-natured fun at the Royal Navy and the English obsession with social status (building on a theme introduced in
The Sorcerer, love between members of different social classes). As with many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, a surprise twist changes everything dramatically near the end of the story. Gilbert oversaw the designs of sets and costumes, and he directed the performers on stage. He sought realism in acting, shunned self-conscious interaction with the audience, and insisted on a standard of characterisation in which the characters were never aware of their own absurdity. He insisted that his actors know their words perfectly and obey his stage directions, which was something new to many actors of the day. an exceptional run for the period. Hundreds of unauthorised, or "pirated", productions of
Pinafore appeared in America. During the run of
Pinafore, Richard D'Oyly Carte split up with his former investors. The disgruntled former partners, who had invested in the production with no return, staged a public fracas, sending a group of thugs to seize the scenery during a performance. Stagehands managed to ward off their backstage attackers. This event cleared the way for Carte, in alliance with Gilbert and Sullivan, to form the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which then produced all their succeeding operas. The libretto of
H.M.S. Pinafore relied on
stock character types, many of which were familiar from European opera (and some of which grew out of Gilbert's earlier association with the
German Reeds): the heroic protagonist (
tenor) and his love-interest (
soprano); the older woman with a secret or a sharp tongue (
contralto); the baffled lyric
baritone – the girl's father; and a classic villain (
bass-baritone). Gilbert and Sullivan added the element of the comic
patter-singing character. With the success of
H.M.S. Pinafore, the D'Oyly Carte repertory and production system was cemented, and each opera would make use of these stock character types. Before
The Sorcerer, Gilbert had constructed his plays around the established stars of whatever theatre he happened to be writing for, as had been the case with
Thespis and
Trial by Jury. Building on the team he had assembled for
The Sorcerer, Gilbert no longer hired stars; he created them. He and Sullivan selected the performers, writing their operas for ensemble casts rather than individual stars. The repertory system ensured that the comic patter character who performed the role of the sorcerer, John Wellington Wells, would become the ruler of the Queen's navy as Sir Joseph Porter in
H.M.S. Pinafore, then join the army as Major-General Stanley in
The Pirates of Penzance, and so on. Similarly, Mrs. Partlet in
The Sorcerer transformed into Little Buttercup in
Pinafore, then into Ruth, the piratical maid-of-all-work in
Pirates. Relatively unknown performers whom Gilbert and Sullivan engaged early in the collaboration would stay with the company for many years, becoming stars of the Victorian stage. These included
George Grossmith, the principal comic;
Rutland Barrington, the lyric baritone;
Richard Temple, the bass-baritone; and
Jessie Bond, the
mezzo-soprano soubrette. The piece premiered in New York rather than London, in an (unsuccessful) attempt to secure the American copyright, and was another big success with both critics and audiences. Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte tried for many years to control the American performance copyrights over their operas, without success. Nevertheless,
Pirates was a hit both in New York, again spawning numerous imitators, and then in London, and it became one of the most frequently performed, translated and parodied Gilbert and Sullivan works, also enjoying successful 1981
Broadway and 1982 West End revivals by
Joseph Papp that continue to influence productions of the opera. In 1880, Sullivan's
cantata The Martyr of Antioch premiered at the
Leeds Triennial Music Festival, with a libretto adapted by Sullivan and Gilbert from an 1822 epic poem by
Henry Hart Milman concerning the 3rd-century martyrdom of
St. Margaret of Antioch. Sullivan became the conductor of the Leeds festival beginning in 1880 and conducted the performance. The
Carl Rosa Opera Company staged the cantata as an opera in 1898.
Savoy Theatre opens Patience as Bunthorne in
Patience, 1881
Patience (1881) satirised the
aesthetic movement in general and its colourful poets in particular, combining aspects of
A. C. Swinburne,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
Oscar Wilde,
James McNeill Whistler and others in the rival poets Bunthorne and Grosvenor. Grossmith, who created the role of Bunthorne, based his makeup, wig and costume on Swinburne and especially Whistler, as seen in the adjacent photograph. The work also lampoons male vanity and chauvinism in the military. The story concerns two rival
aesthetic poets, who attract the attention of the young ladies of the village, formerly engaged to the members of a cavalry regiment. But both poets are in love with Patience, the village milkmaid, who detests one of them and feels that it is her duty to avoid the other despite her love for him. Richard D'Oyly Carte was the booking manager for
Oscar Wilde, a then lesser-known proponent of aestheticism, and dispatched him on an American lecture tour in conjunction with the opera's U.S. run, so that American audiences might better understand what the satire was all about. During the run of
Patience, Carte built the large, modern
Savoy Theatre, which became the partnership's permanent home. It was the first theatre (and the world's first public building) to be lit entirely by electric lighting.
Patience moved into the Savoy after six months at the Opera Comique and ran for a total of 578 performances, surpassing the run of
H.M.S. Pinafore.
Iolanthe Iolanthe (1882) was the first of the operas to open at the Savoy. The fully electric Savoy made possible numerous special effects, such as sparkling magic wands for the female chorus of fairies. The opera poked fun at English law and the
House of Lords and made much of the war between the sexes. The critics felt that Sullivan's work in
Iolanthe had taken a step forward.
The Daily Telegraph commented, "The composer has risen to his opportunity, and we are disposed to account
Iolanthe his best effort in all the Gilbertian series." Similarly,
The Theatre judged that "the music of
Iolanthe is Dr Sullivan's ''chef d'oeuvre''. The quality throughout is more even, and maintained at a higher standard, than in any of his earlier works..." as The Fairy Queen
Iolanthe is one of several of Gilbert's works, including
The Wicked World (1873),
Broken Hearts (1875),
Princess Ida (1884) and
Fallen Fairies (1909), where the introduction of men and "mortal love" into a tranquil world of women wreaks havoc with the status quo. Gilbert had created several "fairy comedies" at the
Haymarket Theatre in the early 1870s. These plays, influenced by the fairy work of
James Planché, are founded upon the idea of self-revelation by characters under the influence of some magic or some supernatural interference. In 1882, Gilbert had a telephone installed in his home and at the prompt desk at the Savoy Theatre so that he could monitor performances and rehearsals from his home study. Gilbert had referred to the new technology in
Pinafore in 1878, only two years after the device was invented and before London even had telephone service. Sullivan had one installed as well, and on 13 May 1883, at a party to celebrate the composer's 41st birthday, the guests, including the
Prince of Wales (later
Edward VII), heard a direct relay of parts of
Iolanthe from the Savoy. This was probably the first live "broadcast" of an opera. During the run of
Iolanthe, in 1883, Sullivan was
knighted by
Queen Victoria. Although it was the operas with Gilbert that had earned him the broadest fame, the honour was conferred for his services to serious music. The musical establishment, and many critics, believed that this should put an end to his career as a composer of comic opera – that a musical
knight should not stoop below oratorio or
grand opera. Sullivan, despite the financial security of writing for the Savoy, increasingly viewed his work with Gilbert as unimportant, beneath his skills, and repetitious. Furthermore, he was unhappy that he had to simplify his music to ensure that Gilbert's words could be heard. But paradoxically, in February 1883, just after
Iolanthe opened, Sullivan had signed a five-year agreement with Gilbert and Carte requiring him to produce a new comic opera on six months' notice.
Princess Ida Princess Ida (1884) spoofed
women's education and
male chauvinism and continued the theme from
Iolanthe of the war between the sexes. The opera is based on
Tennyson's poem
The Princess: A Medley. Gilbert had written a
blank verse farce based on the same material in 1870, called
The Princess, and he reused a good deal of the dialogue from his earlier play in the libretto of
Princess Ida.
Ida is the only Gilbert and Sullivan work with dialogue entirely in blank verse and is also the only one of their works in three acts.
Lillian Russell had been engaged to create the title role, but Gilbert did not believe that she was dedicated enough, and when she missed a rehearsal, he dismissed her.
Princess Ida was the first of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas that, by the partnership's previous standards, was not a success. A particularly hot summer in London did not help ticket sales. The piece ran for a comparatively short 246 performances and was not revived in London until 1919. Sullivan had been satisfied with the libretto, but two months after
Ida opened, Sullivan told Carte that "it is impossible for me to do another piece of the character of those already written by Gilbert and myself." In the meantime, when
Ida closed, Carte produced a revival of
The Sorcerer.
Dodging the magic lozenge The Mikado The most successful of the Savoy Operas was
The Mikado (1885), which made fun of English bureaucracy, thinly disguised by a Japanese setting. Gilbert initially proposed a story for a new opera about a magic
lozenge that would change the characters, which Sullivan found artificial and lacking in "human interest and probability", as well as being too similar to their earlier opera,
The Sorcerer. As dramatised in the film
Topsy-Turvy, the author and composer were at an impasse until 8 May 1884, when Gilbert dropped the lozenge idea and agreed to provide a libretto without any supernatural elements. The story focuses on a "cheap tailor", Ko-Ko, who is promoted to the position of Lord High Executioner of the town of Titipu. He loves his ward, Yum-Yum, but she loves a musician, who is really the son of the emperor of Japan (the Mikado) and who is in disguise to escape the attentions of the elderly and amorous Katisha. The Mikado has decreed that executions must resume without delay in Titipu. When news arrives that the Mikado will be visiting the town, Ko-Ko assumes that he is coming to ascertain whether Ko-Ko has carried out the executions. Too timid to execute anyone, Ko-Ko cooks up a conspiracy to misdirect the Mikado, which goes awry. Eventually, Ko-Ko must persuade Katisha to marry him to save his own life and the lives of the other conspirators. With the opening of trade between England and Japan, Japanese imports, art and styles became fashionable, and a
Japanese village exhibition opened in Knightsbridge, London, making the time ripe for an opera set in Japan. Gilbert said, "I cannot give you a good reason for our... piece being laid in Japan. It... afforded scope for picturesque treatment, scenery and costume, and I think that the idea of a chief magistrate, who is... judge and actual executioner in one, and yet would not hurt a worm, may perhaps please the public." Setting the opera in Japan, an exotic locale far away from Britain, allowed Gilbert and Sullivan to satirise British politics and institutions more freely by clothing them in superficial Japanese trappings. Gilbert wrote, "The Mikado of the opera was an imaginary monarch of a remote period and cannot by any exercise of ingenuity be taken to be a slap on an existing institution."
G. K. Chesterton compared it to
Swift's ''
Gulliver's Travels: "Gilbert pursued and persecuted the evils of modern England till they had literally not a leg to stand on, exactly as Swift did... I doubt if there is a single joke in the whole play that fits the Japanese. But all the jokes in the play fit the English. ... About England Pooh-bah is something more than a satire; he is the truth." Several of the later operas are similarly set in foreign or fictional locales, including The Gondoliers, Utopia, Limited and The Grand Duke''.
The Mikado became the partnership's longest-running hit, enjoying 672 performances at the Savoy Theatre, and surpassing the runs of
Pinafore and
Patience. It remains the most frequently performed Savoy Opera. It has been translated into numerous languages and is one of the most frequently played musical theatre pieces in history.
Ruddigore Ruddigore (1887), a topsy-turvy take on Victorian
melodrama, was less successful than most of the earlier collaborations with a run of 288 performances. The original title,
Ruddygore, together with some of the plot devices, including the revivification of ghosts, drew negative comments from critics. Gilbert and Sullivan respelled the title and made a number of changes and cuts. Nevertheless, the piece was profitable, and the reviews were not all bad. For instance,
The Illustrated London News praised the work and both Gilbert and, especially, Sullivan: "Sir Arthur Sullivan has eminently succeeded alike in the expression of refined sentiment and comic humour. In the former respect, the charm of graceful melody prevails; while, in the latter, the music of the most grotesque situations is redolent of fun." Further changes were made, including a new overture, when
Rupert D'Oyly Carte revived
Ruddigore after the First World War, and the piece was regularly performed by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company thereafter. Some of the plot elements of
Ruddigore were introduced by Gilbert in his earlier one-act opera,
Ages Ago (1869), including the tale of the wicked ancestor and the device of the ghostly ancestors stepping out of their portraits. When
Ruddigore closed, no new opera was ready. Gilbert again proposed a version of the "lozenge" plot for their next opera, and Sullivan reiterated his reluctance to set it. While the two men worked out their artistic differences, and Sullivan finished other obligations, Carte produced revivals of such old favourites as
H.M.S. Pinafore,
The Pirates of Penzance, and
The Mikado.
The Yeomen of the Guard as Wilfred and
Jessie Bond as Phoebe in
YeomenThe Yeomen of the Guard (1888), their only joint work with a serious ending, concerns a pair of strolling players – a jester and a singing girl – who are caught up in a risky intrigue at the
Tower of London during the 16th century. The dialogue, though in prose, is quasi-
Early Modern English in style, and there is no satire of British institutions. For some of the plot elements, Gilbert had reached back to his 1875 tragedy,
Broken Hearts.
The Times praised the libretto: "It should... be acknowledged that Mr. Gilbert has earnestly endeavoured to leave familiar grooves and rise to higher things". Although not a grand opera, the new libretto provided Sullivan with the opportunity to write his most ambitious theatre score to date. The critics, who had recently lauded the composer for his successful oratorio,
The Golden Legend, considered the score to
Yeomen to be Sullivan's finest, including its overture, which was written in
sonata form, rather than as a sequential pot-pourri of tunes from the opera, as in most of his other overtures. The
Daily Telegraph said:
Yeomen was a hit, running for over a year, with strong New York and touring productions. During the run, on 12 March 1889, Sullivan wrote to Gilbert, Sullivan insisted that the next opera must be a
grand opera. Gilbert did not feel that he could write a grand opera libretto, but he offered a compromise that Sullivan eventually accepted. The two would write a light opera for the Savoy, and at the same time, Sullivan a grand opera (
Ivanhoe) for a new theatre that Carte was constructing to present British opera. After a brief impasse over the choice of subject, Sullivan accepted an idea connected with
Venice and Venetian life, as "this seemed to me to hold out great chances of bright colour and taking music."
The Gondoliers and
Courtice Pounds as Giuseppe and Marco in
The Gondoliers The Gondoliers (1889) takes place partly in Venice and partly in a fictional kingdom ruled by a pair of gondoliers who attempt to remodel the monarchy in a spirit of "republican equality." Gilbert recapitulates a number of his earlier themes, including the satire of class distinctions figuring in many of his earlier librettos. The libretto also reflects Gilbert's fascination with the "Stock Company Act", highlighting the absurd convergence of natural persons and legal entities, which plays an even larger part in the next opera,
Utopia, Limited. Press accounts were almost entirely favourable. The
Illustrated London News reported: Sullivan's old collaborator on
Cox and Box (later the editor of
Punch magazine),
F. C. Burnand, wrote to the composer: "Magnificento!...I envy you and W.S.G. being able to place a piece like this on the stage in so complete a fashion." The opera enjoyed a run longer than any of their other joint works except for
H.M.S. Pinafore,
Patience and
The Mikado. There was a command performance of
The Gondoliers for
Queen Victoria and the royal family at
Windsor Castle in 1891, the first Gilbert and Sullivan opera to be so honoured.
The Gondoliers was Gilbert and Sullivan's last great success.
Carpet quarrel Though Gilbert and Sullivan's working relationship was mostly cordial and even friendly, it sometimes became strained, especially during their later operas, partly because each man saw himself as allowing his work to be subjugated to the other's, and partly caused by the opposing personalities of the two: Gilbert was often confrontational and notoriously thin-skinned (though prone to acts of extraordinary kindness), while Sullivan eschewed conflict. Gilbert imbued his libretti with absurdist "topsy-turvy" situations in which the social order was turned upside down. After a time, these subjects were often at odds with Sullivan's desire for realism and emotional content. Gilbert's political satire often poked fun at the wealthy and powerful whom Sullivan sought out for friendship and patronage. c.1881 Gilbert and Sullivan disagreed several times over the choice of a subject. After each of
Princess Ida and
Ruddigore, which were less successful than their seven other operas from
H.M.S. Pinafore to
The Gondoliers, Sullivan asked to leave the partnership, saying that he found Gilbert's plots repetitive and that the operas were not artistically satisfying to him. Gilbert believed that this was a maintenance expense that should be charged to Carte alone. Gilbert confronted Carte, who refused to reconsider the accounts. Gilbert stormed out and wrote to Sullivan that "I left him with the remark that it was a mistake to kick down the ladder by which he had risen". On 5 May 1890, Gilbert wrote to Sullivan: "The time for putting an end to our collaboration has at last arrived. … I am writing a letter to Carte ... giving him notice that he is not to produce or perform any of my libretti after Christmas 1890." Sullivan supported Carte by making an affidavit erroneously stating that there were minor legal expenses outstanding from a battle Gilbert had in 1884 with
Lillian Russell when, in fact, those expenses had already been paid. When Gilbert discovered this, he asked for a retraction of the affidavit; Sullivan refused. Gilbert next wrote
The Mountebanks with
Alfred Cellier and the flop
Haste to the Wedding with
George Grossmith, and Sullivan wrote
Haddon Hall with
Sydney Grundy. Gilbert eventually won the lawsuit, but his actions and statements had been hurtful to his partners. Nevertheless, the partnership had been so profitable that, after the financial failure of the Royal English Opera House, Carte and his wife sought to reunite the author and composer.
Last works ''
Utopia, Limited (1893), their penultimate opera, was a very modest success, and their last,
The Grand Duke (1896), was an outright failure. Neither work entered the canon of regularly performed Gilbert and Sullivan works until the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company made the first complete professional recordings of the two operas in the 1970s. Gilbert had also offered Sullivan another libretto,
His Excellency (1894), but Gilbert's insistence on casting
Nancy McIntosh, his protege from
Utopia, led to Sullivan's refusal, and
His Excellency was instead composed by
F. Osmond Carr. Meanwhile, the Savoy Theatre continued to revive the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, in between new pieces, and D'Oyly Carte touring companies also played them in repertory. After
The Grand Duke, the partners saw no reason to work together again. A last unpleasant misunderstanding occurred in 1898. At the premiere of Sullivan's opera
The Beauty Stone on 28 May, Gilbert arrived at the Savoy Theatre with friends, assuming that Sullivan had reserved some seats for him. Instead, he was informed that Sullivan objected to his presence. The composer later denied that this was true. Sullivan, by this time in exceedingly poor health, died in 1900, although to the end he continued to write new comic operas for the Savoy with other librettists, most successfully with
Basil Hood in
The Rose of Persia (1899). Gilbert also wrote several works, some with other collaborators, in the 1890s. By the time of Sullivan's death in 1900, Gilbert wrote that any memory of their rift had been "completely bridged over," and "the most cordial relations existed between us." He stated that "Sullivan ... because he was a composer of the rarest genius, was as modest and as unassuming as a neophyte should be, but seldom is...I remember all that he has done for me in allowing his genius to shed some of its lustre upon my humble name." Gilbert was knighted during the first repertory season. After Sullivan's death, Gilbert wrote only one more comic opera,
Fallen Fairies (1909; music by
Edward German), which was not a success. ==Legacy and assessment==