The Pocket Guide to Gilbert and Sullivan

Introduction

William Schwenck Gilbert and Arthur Seymour Sullivan collaborated on 14 comic operas, some of which would become the most frequently performed works in musical theatre. They continue to be staged across the world.

The two men also had their own prodigious output of plays, stories, lyrics and music. Their style and approach would influence generations of musicians and dramatists, such as George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde.

The relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan was not always an easy one. They began working together in 1871 and at their peak in the late 1870s and 1880s they would produce a series of extremely successful comic operas, with a new one appearing every year or two. The two men were radically different characters, however, and they often quarrelled over issues such as subject matter, politics and expenses. Throughout the relationship was a very fragile one. By the 1890s the partnership was virtually at an end, after more arguments about artistes, amendments to storylines and lyrics.

Their legacy was not just in the operas themselves, but also in bricks and mortar. The Savoy Theatre had been built specifically to accommodate their operas and Gilbert had gone on to build the Garrick Theatre in 1889. Sullivan was knighted in 1883 and Gilbert in 1907. Their innovations were a direct influence on the musicals that would follow; many of their techniques provided a model for lyricists working on Broadway.

Another enduring legacy was the composers’ relationship with Richard D’Oyly Carte. From 1875 he had produced and managed many of their greatest operas, culminating in the construction of the Savoy Theatre in 1882. Although D’Oyly Carte died in 1901, his name would also live on, inextricably linked to that of Gilbert and Sullivan, as The

D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, which continues to exist and to perform Gilbert and Sullivan works to this day.

On a personal note, researching this book has taken me back 40 years to the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, on Rosebery Avenue in London, recalling the annual arrival of the D’Oyly Carte Company and managing the packed auditorium before curtain up. Each season brought with it a new mix of the operas. By the end of each tour every line of each verse and every theatrical nuance was so familiar that one felt one was a part of the company itself.

Chapter 1

Who Were Gilbert and Sullivan?

Gilbert and Sullivan would become the fathers of the modern blockbuster musical. They created a formula that almost guaranteed theatrical success. Their musicals were melodic and funny and they would continue to attract literally millions of fans to this very day. It was one of the first musical marriages; an artistic partnership, a testing one for the pair of them, and one that was often punctuated with disputes and quarrels. Yet their partnership would become the blueprint for the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Lloyd Webber and Rice, to name but a few. Gilbert and Sullivan created 14 light operas and so popular would they become that they have been, and continue to be, performed by professional and amateur groups across the world.

William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)

His early life

Gilbert was born in the house of his grandfather, at 17 Southampton Street in London. His father was a naval surgeon and his mother was the daughter of a doctor. He had three younger sisters; Jane, Maud and Florence. They lived at 4 Portland Place in Hammersmith and at the age of two Gilbert, whilst being looked after by a maid, was kidnapped in Naples, his parents paying £25 for his safe return. Interestingly, child kidnap would be part of the plots of HMS Pinafore, The Gondoliers and The Pirates of Penzance, so the experience obviously left an indelible mark on him.

Gilbert’s parents separated when he was 19 and it seems clear that he did not come from a particularly happy home. Again shades of his upbringing often emerged in the work that he would write later in life. When Gilbert was seven he was at school in Boulogne and was a fluent French speaker. By the age of 13 he was at Great Ealing School.

A portrait of Gilbert by Frank Holl dated 1886, which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.

In Gilbert’s own words:

He speedily won the reputation of being a clever, bright boy, who was extremely lazy. It was soon discovered, however, that he could work so quickly that his natural tendency to idleness was no handicap to his abilities.

He was at a school that had taught distinguished writers such as Huxley and Thackeray. Out of school he was interested in drawing and reading, but he was already fascinated by the theatre. Again Gilbert said:

Under the influence of social intercourse with many literary and theatrical friends who frequented his father’s house, his bias for the stage naturally entered largely into his ambitions.

Gilbert played Guy Fawkes in a melodrama at school and when he was 15 he saw the actor Charles Kean in The Corsican Brothers. Kean knew Gilbert’s father and sent him back to school when Gilbert turned up at the theatre and asked him for a job.

By the age of 16 Gilbert had become head boy at his school and was also fluent in Latin and Greek. He loved reading Edward Lear and Charles Dickens. After Great Ealing School, Gilbert went to King’s College, London, to study law in 1853. He also decided that he would try to get a commission in the Royal Artillery. He was fascinated by the Crimean War and uniforms; this would be another enduring part of the operas that he would write in the future. At this stage Gilbert fully intended to become a soldier:

When I was 19 years old, the Crimean War was at its height, and commissions in the Royal Artillery were thrown open to competitive examination. So I read for the examination for direct commissions, which was to be held at Christmas 1856. The limit of the age was 20, and as at the date of examination I should have been six weeks over that age, I applied for and obtained from Lord Panmure, the then Secretary of State for War, a dispensation for this excess, and worked away with a will. But the war came to a rather abrupt and unexpected end, and no more officers being required, the examination was indefinitely postponed. Among the blessings of peace may be reckoned certain comedies, operas, farces, and extravaganzas which, if the war had lasted another six weeks, would in all probability never have been written.

First artistic efforts

By October 1855 Gilbert was a student at Inner Temple, studying law. In 1857 he finished his degree and sat an examination to enter the civil service. He became a clerk in the education department of the Privy Council. From the outset he found the job extremely dull and used the ridiculous situations and bureaucracy as a backdrop for his sketches.

Gilbert became a part-time officer in the 5th West Yorkshire Militia. By 1865 he was in the Royal Aberdeenshire Militia, with the rank of captain.

His first work in print was a translation of the Promenade Concert programmes, which gave him an appetite to see his name in print again. By the time he was 24 he had written 15 theatrical works; each time they were rejected.

In 1860 Gilbert inherited £300 from an aunt and gave up his civil service job, was called to the bar and began work as a barrister. He joined the Northern Circuit after working in London courts and first appeared as a prosecutor in Liverpool. This job was no more appealing to Gilbert than the last; he had few clients and over the four years or so was more interested in sketching situations in the court room than practising law. Each of these experiences filled his mind with ideas and his knowledge of the law would also make an appearance in later operas.

In 1861 the magazine Fun was first published and Gilbert was commissioned to write articles and provide drawings. He also wrote poems, not just for Fun but also for Punch. He called his poems the Bab Ballads and in 1869 a collection of these were published, followed by a second volume in 1873. In 1877 Gilbert selected the best of the ballads for another book. Altogether there were 139 poems, but these were never published in one book until the 1970s.

Gilbert also illustrated works that had been written by his father and it seemed for a time that Gilbert’s career would lay in writing and creating ballads. He married Lucy Agnes Turner in 1867; she was 17 and the daughter of an army officer. They lived in Kensington and they would remain together for the rest of their lives.

By the middle of 1869 Gilbert seems to have tired of his poems and had a new interest in dramas. He had already written the burlesque Dulcamara in 1866, but The Palace of Truth met with considerable success in 1870. The Haymarket Theatre also staged Pygmalion and Galatea; this was incredibly successful and including the revivals would earn Gilbert £40,000. Gilbert had finally found something that he not only enjoyed but was also profitable. Over the years he would also plunder his back catalogue of ballads, poems and other writings to provide material for his operas.

Gilbert was always open about the relationship between the ballads and his operas and indeed the influence of other writers’ work, which he often adapted to form the basis of one of the operas. Slowly but surely Gilbert was becoming more and more skilled; he had learned from experience and his drawing skills would be of enormous value to him in the future years, as he was also able to create costumes and scenes.

The music cover for the dance arrangement of Cox and Box.

1867 would in fact be an incredibly important year, not just for Gilbert but also for Sullivan. Gilbert reviewed Sullivan’s first comic opera, Cox and Box, which was being performed at the Adelphi Theatre. Gilbert wrote:

Mr Sullivan’s music is, in many places, of too high a class for the grotesquely absurd plot to which it is wedded. It is funny here and there, and grand or graceful where it is not funny; but the grand and the graceful have, we think, too large a share of the honours to themselves.

In fact Gilbert’s comments would underline a major bone of contention that would continue throughout his working life with Sullivan: the fact that the music was too dominating and that it submerged the words and plot.

Arthur Seymour Sullivan (1842–1900)

His early life

Sullivan was born at 8 Bolwell Terrace in Lambeth, London on May 13 1842. His father, Thomas, was of Irish stock and was a clarinet player in theatres. His mother, Maria Clementina Coughlan, has been variously described as being of Italian or Jewish origins. Sullivan had an older brother Frederic and from the outset the pair of them were encouraged to take an interest in music. In fact in the early years Sullivan’s father taught and copied out music to supplement his income.

There were also military traditions in the family; Sullivan’s grandfather had been a British soldier and had served during the Napoleonic Wars. Sullivan also recalled the story that his grandfather became the paymaster of Napoleon’s household after his surrender in 1815 and that after Napoleon died, in 1821, his grandfather sat in the room where Napoleon’s body was laid out, with a musket in his hand to shoot any rats that might appear.

In the early years Thomas Sullivan played the clarinet at the Surrey Theatre and then became bandmaster at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. This effectively took them out of relative poverty and by the age of eight Sullivan was becoming relatively proficient at nearly all of the instruments in his father’s band. Sullivan also had an excellent singing voice and with the help of a close family friend he managed to join the Chapel Royal Choir. It was a small and exclusive group that sang at the services in the Royal palaces and they also performed on state occasions. They lived in their own private boarding school at 6 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea.

The opening of the Great Industrial Exhibition at Crystal Palace in 1861. From the Library of Congress collection

Sullivan became the first boy to sing solo at the christening of one of Queen Victoria’s children, was patted on the head by the Duke of Wellington, rewarded with a half sovereign from the Prince Consort and performed at the Crystal Palace, along with the Grenadier Guards and Coldstream Guards. It was also clear that Sullivan had his own musical talent in writing and before he was 13 he saw his first music published.

At the age of 14 Sullivan applied for the Mendelssohn Scholarship and won it in 1856. This enabled him to attend the Royal Academy of Music. After sitting an examination the following year his scholarship was renewed. He showed enormous potential and it was decided that he would go to Leipzig to continue his musical education. This meant becoming a Mendelssohn scholar for a third year. Sullivan arrived in Leipzig in September 1858; it had a tremendous reputation and the 16-year-old boy thrived.

First artistic efforts

By 1860 Sullivan’s days at Leipzig seemed to be coming to a close. The Sullivan family managed to raise extra money when his father gave lessons at the piano makers, Broadwoods. Sullivan was also relieved of the need to pay tuition fees and he eventually returned to London in the summer of 1861, thoroughly trained and ready to write music. In fact while he was in Leipzig he had written music for The Tempest. This was picked up by George Groves, who put on the performance of The Tempest at the Crystal Palace in 1862. Queen Victoria asked Sullivan to compose a Te Deum in honour of the marriage of the Prince of Wales. Sullivan also became Master of the Queen’s Music.

Sullivan taught at the Chapel Royal and became Professor of Pianoforte and Ballad Singing at the Crystal Palace School of Art. He continued writing and also became the organist at St Michael’s Church in Chester Square.

Portrait of Arthur Sullivan by Milais dated 1888. It hangs next to Frank Holl’s portrait of W S Gilbert in the National Portrait Gallery.

Towards the end of 1862 Sullivan went to Paris with Charles Dickens, the Lehmanns and Henry Fothergill Chorley. Here Sullivan met the composer Rossini and together they played duets from The Tempest. Sullivan was to be deeply influenced by Rossini’s style, along with Schubert and Mendelssohn. In 1864 he wrote a ballet, L’ile Enchantée, for Covent Garden. He became the theatre’s organist, but his own first opera, The Sapphire Necklace, was not performed. Sullivan then wrote a cantata for the Birmingham Festival, along with Chorley. He was back in Vienna in October 1867 as an assistant to George Groves before meeting Clara Schumann in Baden-Baden.

Back in Vienna, Sullivan met the nephew of Schubert and worked to complete Rosamunde with lost symphonies by Schubert, which were performed in November 1867 at Crystal Palace. From 1867 to 1872 Sullivan was the organist at St Peter’s Church in Cranley Gardens. A year earlier he had written a symphony and a cello concerto. In 1869 he wrote The Prodigal Son for the Worcester Festival and in the following year Overture di Ballo for the Birmingham Festival. By now Sullivan was also a professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Music and towards the end of the decade he moved to Pimlico, where Gilbert also lived. Sullivan also composed a number of hymn tunes, most of which were published, his most famous tune being Onward Christian Soldiers. Sullivan had gained many of his contacts through extensive networking and his close association with George Groves.

He had affairs with two of John Scott Russell’s daughters, Rachel and Louise, in the 1860s. In fact he secretly became engaged to Rachel. Sullivan’s father had died in October 1866, but his father’s death had proved to be the catalyst to create the critically acclaimed oratorio In Memoriam, which was performed at the Norwich Festival the same month. Rachel would eventually marry and move to India, where she died at the age of 36 in 1882 and although she burned all of the letters that Sullivan sent to her, he kept all her letters. Louise died of consumption as a spinster in 1878.