There were no prima donnas, and the chorus played a prominent role.Īs frequently happened, the prolific Gilbert recycled a previously published work for the plot of the company’s first production, The Sorcerer, in which a magician gives the inhabitants of a village a love potion. There he established his first opera company. By then Carte had raised the funds necessary to take over the Opéra-Comique Theatre. Adding another layer of humor to the opera, he refers liberally to the music of Verdi, Donizetti and Bellini to make musical comments on the characters.Īlthough Trial by Jury was a success, Gilbert and Sullivan did not collaborate again until 1877. His music never overwhelms Gilbert’s words, and it assists their quicksilver swings in meter and mood. In composing for the piece, Sullivan developed techniques he would use for the next 20 years. His libretto about a woman who sues her former fiancé for breach of promise, only to become engaged to the opportunistic judge who hears the case, pokes fun at both saccharine ideals of love and the dignity of the bar. As a young man, he had worked-quite unsuccessfully-as a barrister. The lyrics were witty and pointed, for Gilbert wrote about a subject he knew. In Trial by Jury, which opened in 1875, there were no prima donnas, and the chorus played a prominent role, as it would in subsequent operas. As a librettist and director, Gilbert was influenced by both these ideas. Some reformers argued that actors should not declaim their parts, but speak more naturally, and that plays should be written for ensembles of actors, not as flimsy showcases for a star. Theater craft was changing as well, moving gingerly toward verisimilitude. These audiences would soon appreciate the wit and cultured allusions in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas. But educated audiences were also beginning to enjoy parodies of classical subjects, such as Greek mythology and the plays of Shakespeare, and they attended opéra bouffes that lampooned popular operas. Raucous pantomimes, breathtaking spectacles, melodramas, and translations of racy French plays were still popular. ARENAPAL/TOPHAM/THE IMAGE WORKSĪs incomes rose during the Victorian era, theater audiences grew in size and sophistication. Yum Yum, Pitti Sing and Peep Bo are little maids from school in The Mikado, most popular of the Gilbert and Sullivan canon. Although its run was respectable, this piece about a troupe of actors who meet the Olympian gods in their dotage was an artistic disappointment, and probably only Carte saw a future in the duo. The two had worked together several years earlier on a hastily produced operetta called Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old, most of the music for which has been lost. Gilbert showed him the script for the one-act Trial by Jury, and Carte enthusiastically suggested that he ask Sullivan to collaborate on it. The London theater manager was looking for a third item to form a triple bill. Luckily, Richard D’Oyly Carte recognized that these singular talents could also work together to realize his dream of creating English comic operas. Gilbert was a successful playwright, theater critic and humorist Sullivan was a sought-after conductor and the most famous composer in England. In 1875, when William Schwenck Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan began to collaborate in earnest, they were already important men. The life and times of "Emma" author Jane Austen.
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