Gilbert and Sullivan were a Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan. The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado are among the best known.Davis, Peter G. Smooth Sailing, New York magazine, 21 January 2002, accessed 6 November 2007 The producer Richard D'Oyly Carte brought Gilbert and Sullivan together and nurtured their collaboration. He built the Savoy Theatre in 1881 to present their joint works (which came to be known as the Savoy Operas) and founded the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which performed and promoted Gilbert and Sullivan's works for more than a century.
Gilbert, who wrote the witty, satiric libretti for these operas, created fanciful "topsy-turvy" worlds where each absurdity is taken to its logical conclusion: fairies rub elbows with British lords, flirting is a capital offence, gondoliers ascend to the monarchy, and pirates emerge as noblemen who have gone astray.Leigh, Mike. "True anarchists", The Guardian, 4 November 2007, accessed 6 November 2007 Sullivan, six years Gilbert's junior, composed the music, contributing memorable melodies that could convey both humour and pathos.
Their operas have enjoyed broad and enduring international success and are still performed frequently throughout the English-speaking world.Bradley (2005), Chapter 1Hewett, Ivan. "The Magic of Gilbert and Sullivan". The Telegraph, 2 August 2009, accessed 14 April 2010. Gilbert and Sullivan introduced innovations in content and form that directly influenced the development of musical theatre through the 20th century.[Downs, Peter. "Actors Cast Away Cares", Hartford Courant, 18 October 2006 The operas have also influenced political discourse, literature, film and television and have been widely parodied and pastiched by humorists.
Beginnings
Gilbert before Sullivan
Gilbert was born in London on 18 November 1836. His father, William, was a naval surgeon who later wrote novels and short stories, some of which included illustrations by his son.Crowther, Andrew. The Life of W. S. Gilbert, The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed 21 August 2012. In 1861, to supplement his income, the younger Gilbert began writing illustrated stories, poems and articles of his own, many of which would later be mined as inspiration for his plays and operas, particularly Gilbert's series of illustrated poems, the Bab Ballads.Stedman, pp. 26–29, 123–24, and the introduction to Gilbert's Foggerty's Fairy and Other Tales
In the Bab Ballads and his early plays, Gilbert developed a unique "topsy-turvy" style in which humour was derived by setting up a ridiculous premise and working out its logical consequences, however absurd. Director and playwright Mike Leigh described the "Gilbertian" style as follows:
Gilbert developed his innovative theories on the art of stage direction, following the playwright and theatrical reformer Tom Robertson. At the time Gilbert began writing, theatre in Britain was in disrepute.Bond, Jessie. The Reminiscences of Jessie Bond: Introduction, The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed 21 May 2007. Gilbert helped to reform and elevate the respectability of the theatre, especially beginning with his six short family-friendly comic operas, or "entertainments", for Thomas German Reed.Stedman, pp. 62–68; Bond, Jessie, The Reminiscences of Jessie Bond: Introduction, The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed 21 August 2012
At a rehearsal for one of these entertainments, Ages Ago, in 1870, the composer Frederic Clay introduced Gilbert to his friend, the young composer Arthur Sullivan.Crowther, Andrew. Ages Ago – Early Days, The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed 21 August 2012 Over the next year, before the two first collaborated, Gilbert continued to write humorous verse, stories and plays, including the comic operas Our Island Home (1870) and A Sensation Novel (1871), and the blank verse comedies The Princess (1870), The Palace of Truth (1870) and Pygmalion and Galatea (1871).Stedman, pp. 77–90
Sullivan before Gilbert
Sullivan was born in London on 13 May 1842. His father was a military bandmaster, and by the time Arthur had reached the age of eight, he was proficient with all the instruments in the band. In school he began to compose anthems and songs. In 1856, he received the first Mendelssohn Scholarship and studied at the Royal Academy of Music and then at Leipzig, where he also took up conducting. His graduation piece, completed in 1861, was a suite of incidental music to Shakespeare's The Tempest. Revised and expanded, it was performed at the Crystal Palace in 1862 and was an immediate sensation. He began building a reputation as England's most promising young composer, composing a symphony, a concerto, and several overtures, among them the Overture di Ballo, in 1870."An Illustrated Interview with Sir Arthur Sullivan, by Arthur H Lawrence, Part 1", The Strand Magazine, Volume xiv, No.84 (December 1897). See also Sullivan's Letter to The Times, 27 October 1881, Issue 30336, pg. 8 col C
His early major works for the voice included The Masque at Kenilworth (1864); an oratorio, The Prodigal Son (1869); and a dramatic cantata, On Shore and Sea (1871). He composed a ballet, L'Île Enchantée (1864) and incidental music for a number of Shakespeare plays. Other early pieces that were praised were his Symphony in E, Cello Concerto, and Overture in C (In Memoriam) (all three of which premiered in 1866).Shepherd, Marc, , The Gilbert and Sullivan Discography, accessed 10 June 2007 These commissions were not sufficient to keep Sullivan afloat. He worked as a church organist and composed numerous hymns, popular songs, and parlour ballads.Stephen Turnbull's Biography of Arthur Sullivan, The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed 22 November 2006
Sullivan's first foray into comic opera was Cox and Box (1866), written with the librettist F. C. Burnand for an informal gathering of friends. Public performance followed, with W. S. Gilbert (then writing dramatic criticism for the magazine Fun) saying that Sullivan's score "is, in many places, of too high a class for the grotesquely absurd plot to which it is wedded."Harris, pp. X–XI Nonetheless, it proved highly successful, and is still regularly performed today. Sullivan and Burnand's second opera, The Contrabandista (1867) was not as successful.Ainger, p. 72
Operas
First collaborations
Thespis
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.Tillett, Selwyn and Spencer, Roderic. "Forty Years of Thespis Scholarship", accessed 20 July 2021
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,Walters, Michael. "Thespis: a reply", W. S. Gilbert Society Journal, Vol. 4, part 3, Issue 29. Summer 2011. 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.Williams, p. 35 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.
Over the next three years, Gilbert and Sullivan did not have occasion to work together again, but each man became more eminent in his field. Gilbert worked with Frederic Clay on Happy Arcadia (1872) and Alfred Cellier on Topsyturveydom (1874) and wrote The Wicked World (1873), Sweethearts (1874) and several other libretti, farces, extravaganzas, fairy comedies, dramas and adaptations. Sullivan completed his Festival Te Deum (1872); another oratorio, The Light of the World (1873); his only song cycle, The Window; or, The Song of the Wrens (1871); incidental music to The Merry Wives of Windsor (1874); and more songs, parlour ballads, and hymns, including "Onward, Christian Soldiers" (1872). At the same time, the audience for theatre was growing because of the rapidly expanding British population; improvement in education and the standard of living, especially of the middle class; improving public transport; and installation of street lighting, which made travel home from the theatre safer.Richards, p. 9 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.Jacobs, pp. 2–3
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.
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.Walbrook, H. M. (1922), Gilbert and Sullivan Opera, a History and Comment (Chapter 3), The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed 21 May 2007
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...."Ayer p. 408 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.Bradley (1996), p. 14