Arthur Sullivan was born at 8 Bollwell Street, in Lambeth, just south of the Thames. At the time his father, Thomas Sullivan was employed in the orchestra of a small theatre and was on very small income. Fortunately within a few years Thomas was engaged as Military Bandmaster and the family moved to Sandhurst, the military training college in Hampshire. Later appointed Professor of Clarinet at Kneller Hall, the army’s music school. Arthur Sullivan showed early promise as a musician, he attended band practices and apparently could play every instrument by the age of five and completed his first composition at the age of seven.

Arthur then was accepted as a chorister of the Chapel Royal, a body which provided music for all Royal and National occasions. His musical knowledge impressed everyone and he became head boy of the school for choristers. Arthur won a scholarship to Royal Academy of Music. At the age of 16 his scholarship was extended to allow him to study in Leipzig, a premiere music centre at the time. He returned to England at the age of 18 with his graduation piece under his arm, "Music to Shakespeare’s Tempest", which he told his mother "would take England by storm"! Strangely enough it did. He was lucky enough to have it programmed at a concert at Crystal Palace and it was so well-received that it was scheduled for another performance and Sullivan became the talk of the music world.

He settled down to earn a living as a teacher and organist while he was preparing for his career as a composer. Sullivan was destined for a career in serious music. He had composed a symphony, several overtures, a number of oratorios and much ecclesiastical work (of which Onward Christian Soldiers is one of the best known). Sullivan was hailed as the English Mendelsshon and though he had dabbled with the odd lighter work it was not thought to be where his future lay. All this was to change when Gilbert ran into Richard D’Oyly Carte. Carte asked if Gilbert could help him with a one act piece and the librettist happened to have a work on hand. Carte immediately proposed Sullivan as a composer and the G&S partnership had begun.

During the 1860s Sullivan lived in Pimlico, not far from Chelsea, a slightly bohemian quarter of London at the time. It wasn’t long before he acquired fame, riches and the friendship of the highest of high society and the most illustrious of the art and music world. He moved into an apartment in Victoria street in 1880 and moved down the road a few years later and remained there for the rest of his life. This building was only a stone’s throw from Westminster Abbey and Sullivan entertained lavishly there, with the Prince of Wales being a frequent guest. To make life more comfortable he employed a valet, a housekeeper, a cook and a secretary! The building was bulldozed in the 1970s.

Sullivan would compose sitting at his desk, not at a piano. He said that if he wrote at a piano, all he would hear was the sound of a piano, but he heard the full richness of an orchestra at his desk. Ill health plagued Sullivan all his life and he died early at the age of 58 in November 1900. Sullivan and his friends believed his calling was as a serious musician. When he went to Leipzig his teachers said he was better than Brahms.

Gilbert & Sullivan Savoy Operas

Sullivan is today most famous for The Savoy Operas. Lets look through them in chronological order.

Trial By Jury: 30 minute operetta. Plot concerns a Breach of Promise of marriage case. Angelina has been thrown over by Edwin and takes him to court. Video extract: The case for the plaintiff presented by her council and the defendant’s response. Recording made at The International G&S Festival in Buxton, England. Performers from Savoynet - the only virtual G&S society. To be a member you log onto an Internet site. 700 members who discuss every aspect of the operas imaginable but rarely meet. Exception is the International Festival where they get together and put on a show with a week’s rehearsal. In Trial, there is a point where the jury show a bias by not listening to the defendant. You’ll hear laughter in this when instead of a newspaper the jury produce computer magazines, to match the partiality of the group.

Success of Trial led to formation of a company, by Richard D’Oyly Carte to present their works. First full length opera was The Sorcerer. Plot involves an idealistic young man who, being in love, believes everyone else should be too, so uses his betrothal party to distribute a potion to all the village so that they will fall in love with the first person they see. He gets the potion from John Wellington Wells a sorcerer who introduces himself with a patter number: CD The Sorcerer.

It was unusual to portray clergy on stage. In this, the vicar to the village, Dr Daly, has drunk the potion but failed to find anyone else to love and sings a rather melancholy ditty. Rutland Barrington, who created the role, was worried about the audience reaction and said to Gilbert "It is a daring experiment to introduce a clergyman into a comic opera. I fancy the audience will either take very kindly to me or hoot me off the stage for ever." Gilbert replied "I quite agree with you." And left Barrington in a state of uncertainty only resolved on the opening night when he was met by great acclaim. Here’s his song as he looks for someone to love: CD The Sorcerer.

Sorcerer ran for 178 performances and was a success. So another work was commissioned from G&S. This time set on board a ship: HMS Pinafore. Its success was enormous, a real blockbuster. It tells of a simple sailor who loves his Captain’s daughter, who is far beneath him in rank. In turn she is loved by the First Lord of the Admiralty. It is interesting to note that a government minister not an admiral - to fail to understand this is to fail to understand the satire of the opera.

The D’Oyly Carte Opera Co toured G&S without a break for over 100 years. They performed the definitive versions of G&S and it never occurred to anyone to make archive recordings of their productions. In the early 1970s, however, they specially recorded a performance of HMS Pinafore for TV. Video extract: Here’s the entry of Captain Corcoran and then we’ll fast forward to the entry of Sir Joseph Porter after sailor’s exit ff to their re-entry for "Sir Joseph’s barge".

Pinafore was such a tremendous hit that everyone copied it. The Americans in particular got hold of the script and vocal score and did their own versions without paying any royalties. So Richard D’Oyly Carte with Gilbert and Sullivan went over to America to do the authentic Pinafore and found that there were more than 50 productions already playing in New York. While there they put on their next opera. Having suffered the piracy of their work, they made pirates the subjects of their next work, which premiered in New York. The Pirates of Penzance had 3 opening nights. The one in NY. To obtain British copyright it had to have a UK performance, which was put on for a matinee in Devon by one of the touring companies of Pinafore. As an aside, playing the Pirate king was a certain Fred Baker, known as Federici, who ended his career falling through the trap during a performance of Faust, in Melbourne and lives on as the Princess Theatre ghost. The third premiere was in London, where the Pirate King was Richard Temple. Temple is a character in the movie about G&S Topsy-Turvy, best remembered for having the Mikado’s song cut at dress rehearsal. The actor who did the role of Temple was not a wonderful singer, so I thought you might like to hear what he really sounded like. About 30 years after the premiere of Pirates, Temple recorded the Pirate King’s song. CD Art of the Savoyard.

So far most of our examples have favoured the male voice. Here is what is usually regarded as the definitive recording of Poor Wondering One. Valerie Masterson is usually regarded as one of the best, if not the best, soprano who ever sang G&S. Most of her career was spent in the French operatic repertoire but she believes that G&S is the best training for young singers and is working with academies in England to introduce G&S courses into their curriculum. Her Poor Wondering One is legendary and I am very grateful that we have it on record. CD: Pirates.

Outrageous fad’s have always existed. The punks of the 80s replaced the hippies of the 70s who replaced the teddy boys of the 60s or the Widges and Bodgies. Before that it was crew cuts and boys were told to grow their hair. The aesthetic craze of the Victorian era was initiated by the artistic community and hundreds jumped onto the bandwagon. They are the objects of Gilbert’s satire in Patience. Two aesthetic poets are in love with the village milkmaid, who has no interest in them, and are perused by a bevy of aesthetic maidens. In wonderful contrast the maidens are pursued by a regiment of First Life Guards. It is one of the funniest of the operas and has some of the best music Sullivan wrote. The Australian Opera did a very successful production which was revived several times. It featured Dennis Olsen and Anthony Warlow, two of Australia’s favourite singers. Some extracts from the Oz Op production: AW expounding the fable of the Magnet and the Churn, the duet between Bunthorne and Jane (Olsen and Heather Begg) and a lively quintet "If Saphir I choose to marry" plus Olsen & Warlow duet. CD Australian Opera Patience.

After Pinafore, Pirates and Patience, what someone called the Proud Procession of the P’s looked as if it might continue as the next opera was announced as Perola. The real name was revealed at the last moment as Iolanthe. This opera features a war between fairyland and the house of peers. Possibly one of the most effective scenes in the whole of G&S is the march of the peers. You usually see this as the entire house of lords marching in wearing their coronets and robes. Recently I saw a modern dress version which still captured the magnificence of the moment. Video Iolanthe: Peer’s entry. From the second act of Iolanthe, the Fairy Queen sings of her passion for the guardsman, Private Willis: CD Iolanthe.

Next in line was Princess Ida. Opening night of which is first scene from Topsy-Turvy. Based on old play of Gilbert’s, in turn was based on lengthy poem of Gilbert. Subject, a satire on education for women and very anti-feminist. It has some of the best work of the pair but is little performed and undervalued. Is also rarely recorded but of the 3 or 4 recordings, the best is the first. We’ll listen to an extended section of the act 2 finale (it’s in 3 acts). Princess Ida has discovered 3 young men have infiltrated her women-only university. She runs off and falls into the river, rescued by Prince Hilarion to whom she was betrothed at birth. Ungratefully she orders the men to be taken prisoner, despite a plea of love to her from Hilarion. Just then the Prince’s father bursts in with his army and her own brothers as his prisoners. He expects Ida to surrender at once but she hurls defiance at him, setting up the expectation of a good stoush in act 3. CD Ida.

The Mikado, without doubt the most popular of all the operas. 672 performances in its first run and one of the most famous of the Mikados, Darryl Fancourt is said to have played the role over 3000 times (he was with the D’Oyly Carte for 33 years). It is the most recorded of the operas, is the only one to be turned into a Hollywood film in 1939 and the D’Oyly Carte production was filmed in 1966. The story of its writing was also the subject of the recent film, Topsy-Turvy. I’ve chosen to show you how that film records the first performance of Mikado. There was also a production by Jonathon Miller at the English National Opera, which was set in a hotel in Britain in the 1930s. Here’s the scene leading up to Tit Willow. Video.

Moving on from the most popular to one of the least popular, we have Ruddigore. Yet for me and many of the G&S inner brotherhood, it is the best. A parody of the popular melodramas, it satirises Victorian double standards. At the end of act 1 Rose Maybud is about to marry her long-time admirer Robin Oakapple. Of course the ceremony is interrupted and deferred for a lot of mix-ups to occur until the end of act 2. It is difficult to choose a moment to show you from this work because there are so many highlights. But this is just before the wedding is interrupted when the whole cast sings a madrigal. The video is from the Buxton Festival and also from the Savoynet virtual group, with 9 different nationalities on stage. Video: SNet Ruddigore. Moving on to the second act. Robin has become the Bad Baronet of Ruddigore, displacing his younger brother, who has married Mad Margaret and taken holy orders. He returns to the ancestral home to try to persuade his brother to refuse to commit the daily crime which is the curse on all the baronets. This extract is from the production by the G&S Society presented last July. Video Ruddigore.

The Yeomen of the Guard is the most serious of the G&S works. It is set in the Tower of London and involves a love story and the escape of a condemned prisoner. In the past few years several well-known musicians who we do not connect with G&S have made recordings of the operas. One was conducted by Sir Neville Marriner and features Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel as Wilfred Shadbolt and Sir Thomas Allen, who is my very favourite Figaro, as Jack Point the jester. I’m going to give you a few selections featuring these two. First, I have a Song to Sing O, with Thomas Allen and Sylvia McNair and then from the second act a scene in which Point tries to give Wilfred a lesson in how to become a jester. They decide to spin a cock and bull tail about how the prisoner Fairfax was shot escaping - quite untrue - and bring on the company by firing off an arquebus with which they claim they killed Fairfax. CD Yeomen.

All Gilbert and Sullivan’s early works were set in England. The Mikado, which is supposed to be Japanese, is in fact a fantasy world in which England was satirised in exotic garb. Their last four operas, however, were all set abroad. The Gondoliers has a Venetian setting. Gilbert gave Sullivan an opportunity to compose music in the Italian style and he did capture that sun-drenched feeling. The D’Oyly Carte performed continually until 1982. Rising costs and lack of subsidy forced their closure but when Bridget D’Oyly Carte died she left a sum toward its restoration. The New D’Oyly Carte now does occasional productions, currently touring Pinafore in Scotland and running Mikado at Savoy. Some of its early productions were somewhat weird and disliked by most G&S enthusiasts. But when those productions were put on record they proved to be musically very good. Here’s extracts from their Gondoliers: Part of the act 1 opening and "When a merry maiden marries". CD Gondoliers.

The Gondoliers was first produced in 1889 and within a few months war broke out between Gilbert and his partner. It led to a breakdown in the collaboration and it wasn’t until this was patched up four years later that they worked together again. Utopia Limited is set on a south pacific island where the king is an anglophile and wants to make his country as like England as possible. He imports six of what he calls "flowers of progress" to train everyone in English ways. Early in act 2 he holds a cabinet meeting to show how their reforms are progressing. Gilbert conceived this as a parody of the Negro minstrel shows that were popular at the time. It was the show stopper of the original production. Two years ago, I directed this for the G&S Society and felt that black-faced minstrel shows would not be recognised by the audience so I turned the scene into a parody of old style music hall entertainment. This is the scene as we did it. Notice the simple native village transformed with Union Jacks. Video: Utopia.

The last collaboration was The Grand Duke. It had the shortest run of any of the operas and was generally counted as a failure. It is also one of my favourites and although it is very complicated and needs some text doctoring, is funny and has some really good music. Just as Gilbert nearly took out the Mikado’s song, which went on to become one of the most popular and quoted ones of the whole canon, he cut a song for the Prince of Monte Carlo which is one of the best of the entire collaboration. It comes close to the end of a very long opera and has little to do with the rest of the plot, which may be the reason it was considered expendable. It tells of how the Prince managed to get out of debt by inventing a round game, called Roulette and shows how it is played. Here we have the Herald introducing the Duke and then the roulettes song. CD: Grand Duke.