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Sullivan and Dickens
One man was a mere 20-year-old, a musician and composer of modest origins. The other, at 60, was one of the most celebrated writers of his time. Yet it’s not surprising that young Arthur Sullivan could count Charles Dickens as a friend. Sullivan has been called a “born courtier,” so charming and delightful to be with that he could make friends with anyone. And his friendships with influential people over the years boosted his career amazingly – from his violin-playing friend Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, to the composer Rossini, to famous soprano Jenny Lind (the Swedish Nightingale). Even Queen Victoria admired him; she conferred a knighthood upon him in 1883…
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Which Came First, the Music or the Words?
When writing a song, what does a composer start with – the tune, or the lyrics? Do you come up with words to fit a particular melody, or do you read the words and imagine a tune that would fit the words? The answer is, different composers and lyricists work in different ways. For Gilbert and Sullivan, the journey from musical idea to finished song took an interesting path: Gilbert would write lyrics that fit a popular tune he had in mind. Then he would give the words to Sullivan, without telling him what song he’d used. Sullivan would study the rhythm of the words and come up with a tune that…
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How Sullivan’s promotion made “HMS Pinafore” a Success
H.M.S. Pinafore, the beloved Gilbert and Sullivan opera, was almost a flop. Pinafore opened on May 25, 1878, at a London playhouse called the Opera Comique. The production was well-received, but within a week or two London was engulfed in a summer heat wave. Nobody wanted to sit in a hot, stuffy theater in their Victorian wool suits or tight corsets, so people began to stay home in droves. Box office profits dropped precipitously. In July, one of the Opera Comique’s directors, Edward Bayley, wrote complaining to theatrical manager Rupert D’Oyly Carte, “I hope you will get Gilbert & Sullivan’s agreement in writing to a break at once. I do…
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W.S. Gilbert’s Family History…Look, a Squirrel!
What was Sir William Gilbert’s family background? Was he a descendant of a distinguished and noble family line that included the Elizabethan navigator, Sir Humphrey Gilbert? Or was he the descendant of a Hampshire yeoman who moved to London and found prosperity through his corner grocery store? During his life, W. S. Gilbert’s family legend was that the original Gilberts came from Cornwall. The most notable member of the family was Sir Humphrey Gilbert (1539-1583) who was Sir Walter Raleigh’s half-brother (they had the same mother, Catherine Champernowne). Sir Humphrey was an adventurer, explorer, member of parliament, a soldier serving under the reign of Queen Elizabeth and a pioneer of…
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Sullivan’s “The Lost Chord”
Arthur Sullivan wrote a lot of popular “parlor music” – songs that were intended to be played and sung in middle-class homes by amateur performers in the days before radio, television and so on. One of his most famous works is called “The Lost Chord.” The text is a poem by Adelaide Proctor, which was published in The English Woman’s Journal in 1860. Sullivan is said to have struggled for years to set the poem to music, but finally found his way to expressing himself musically in 1877, as he sat by the bedside of his dying brother Frederick. Fred Sullivan had trained as an architect, but soon switched to…
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W.S. Gilbert on “The Reward of Merit”
It is said that William S. Gilbert was often annoyed that the Victorian public seemed to worship men with money or aristocratic birth, and totally ignored men of talent and genius. So the notion that one had to be rich or titled to get respect was probably on his mind when he composed the following poem, “The Reward of Merit.” Originally, these were the words to a song that was to have been sung in the second act of “Iolanthe,” but it was cut on the grounds that it slowed down the story. So instead, Gilbert included it in the 1897 edition of Bab Ballads. Some of the references in…
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An Unexpected G&S Performance
I was going to do a serious post today, but then I remembered this little gem and had to share it. When I was a mere child of ten, I discovered the very first “Doctor Who” — featuring the first Doctor, portrayed by William Hartnell. Even though I missed some of the finer details of the plot during that first season because the episodes were broadcast in Spanish on Mexican television (I grew up in Mexico City), the Daleks still were capable of scaring the bejeezus out of me and my nine-year-old brother. And so, without further ado, here’s a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan that’s really out of this world.…
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Test your Gilbert and Sullivan Knowledge
Did you know that there is a site dedicated to an online Gilbert and Sullivan quiz? There is! Created by Alexander Scutt, it’s the Gilbert and Sullivan Quiz . So now that you’ve learned all about the fourteen Gilbert and Sullivan operas from last week’s blog post, you can test your knowledge! There are 20 quizzes in all, so if you’re brave (and have memorized all the lyrics and fun jokes), go for it! Once you’re at the site, use the link at the top right of the page to go to the First Quiz , or check out the Quiz Topics! It’s a fun way to learn all sorts of trivia related to…
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Gilbert & Sullivan 101: All Fourteen Operas
So, just in case you came in late and need a refresher, here is a list of all of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas. (Just to be even more basic, William S. Gilbert wrote the words and Arthur Seymour Sullivan wrote the music.) Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old (1871 Christmas entertainment for John Hollingshead’s Gaiety Theatre, where it received its first performance on December 26, 1871 and ran for 63 performances. Although it has often been described as a failure, it outlasted most of the Christmas entertainments that season.) Plot: The gods on Mount Olympus are old and tired, so they decide to take a holiday. Since somebody…
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Arthur Sullivan and the Puzzle of the Lost Music
For nearly fifty years, the musical score lay hidden. Composed by Franz Schubert – known for his symphonies, romantic settings of traditional Lieder, and for a well-known version of Ave Maria (listen to Luciano Pavarotti sing it here) – after more than four decades, the incidental music for the play Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus seemed to be irrevocably lost. Arthur Sullivan meets George Grove In 1862, Sullivan, just 20 years old, was at the beginning of his professional career as a composer. To make progress, he needed the help of influential friends. Luckily, Sullivan was a charming man who made friends easily and sincerely. His first influential friend was Henry Chorley,…
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“I’ve Got A Little List!”
One of the most famous (and most often-parodied) songs from The Mikado is Koko’s “I’ve Got a Little List.” Koko, a cheap tailor about to be executed for the crime of flirting, finds himself suddenly elevated to the rank of Lord High Executioner by the townspeople of Titipu. They figure he’d be the last person to execute anyone, since he would have to cut his own head off first! But then the Mikado himself writes to say that if they don’t have an execution by the end of the month, the whole town will be downgraded to a village. So, since Koko has to execute someone, he comes up with…
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Beauty in the Eye of the Victorian Beholder
What features were considered beautiful in the Victorian age? Would our teenage Victorian sleuth, Lucy Turner, have considered herself beautiful by the standards of the day — and if so, what would she have done about it? Lucy, as we can see from her photos, was small and slender with blonde hair and blue eyes. She probably would have had light colored eyebrows and eyelashes, and possibly even freckles on her nose. Being the youngest daughter of a respectable, upper-middle-class widow, however, she would not have worn make-up. Victorian women were under pressure to look beautiful, but no respectable female of that age would be caught wearing cosmetics – at least not visible cosmetics. Any woman…
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Shopping — Victorian Style
Women of the Victorian era enjoyed shopping as much as women do today. By the middle of the 19th century, shopping had evolved into a way for middle-class Victorian women to get out and explore the city without male companions. The first prototype of the shopping mall might be said to have been the Great Exhibition of 1851, which displayed consumer goods from around the globe. A Victorian woman in the 1860s on a shopping expedition in London would probably head toward the West End, where the shops catered to fashionable upper-middle-class ladies. She might also go to Regent Street, which was designed as a promenade and shopping area with…
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W.S. Gilbert, Amateur Photographer
In his later years, William S. Gilbert’s favorite hobbies were croquet and photography. Of course, Gilbert wasn’t the only “shutter-bug” out there. During the 1880s, when he seems to have taken up the hobby, photography had become a popular pastime. Check out this PBS documentary on the subject. The Kodak camera was introduced in May 1888. It was easy to use – Eastman’s advertising slogan was “You press the button, we do the rest.” On the down side, it cost a then-whopping $25 (still less than a wet-plate camera). Everyone tried out the Kodak camera – President Grover Cleveland had one. Even the Dalai Lama had one, and brought his…
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Arthur Sullivan: Early Success and Early Heartbreak
(Note: Sorry for the delay in posting this week’s blog — I finished a free short story, which you can read here.) Everybody liked Arthur Sullivan. Good looking, charming, funny, smart, superbly talented. How could they not? Men liked him and women fell in love with him. According to Hesketh Pearson, author of Gilbert and Sullivan, “With women his appeal was immediate and often permanent. His oval, olive-tinted face, his dark luminous eyes, his large sensuous mouth, and the generous crop of black curly hair which overhung his low forehead, no doubt added to the attraction.” But despite all this, Arthur Sullivan’s first serious love affair ended in heartbreak. Michael…
- Victorian feminism, Victorian love and marriage, Victorian theater, Victorian women, Victoriana, W S Gilbert
Was W. S. Gilbert a Victorian Feminist?
What did W.S. Gilbert think about women? During the Victorian era, the division between the worlds of men and women seemed particularly wide, with many popular male writers making efforts to restrict women to the domestic sphere of influence. But as society at large changed, the role of women in public life was expanded – women began to be admitted to colleges and universities, reformers such as John Stuart Mill advocated for women’s right to vote, and women were increasingly able to participate in the world outside their homes. So what was William S. Gilbert’s attitude toward women in the public arena? “Gilbert always enjoyed the company of women, particularly…
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W.S. Gilbert the Recycler
Today I am plundering the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive (which is moving soon to gilbertandsullivanarchive.org) to show how William S. Gilbert “recycled” some of his early literary ideas into the bases of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas we know today. Before Gilbert began writing his comic operas, he was well-known for his witty magazine articles and for a series of comically grotesque poems, collectively known as The Bab Ballads. (“Bab” was William’s childhood nickname, and was the pseudonym he used for this series of poems.) You can find them all collected in the G&S archive here. From “The Student” to “The Sorcerer” In 1865, Gilbert wrote a parody of…
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Food, Glorious Food!
Food in the Victorian era advanced as a result of technology. In 1830, about 90 percent of all food consumed in Britain was grown in Britain. By 1900, the United Kingdom could enjoy food that came from around the globe. Food preservation became more reliable and more widespread in the Victorian era. In the late 18th century, Emperor Napoleon, concerned about feeding his armies, had offered a prize to anyone who could develop a way of preserving food. The tin can was invented by Nicholas Appert, who realized that if food were sealed tightly enough and then heated, it wouldn’t spoil. In 1810 Englishman Peter Durand found a way to…
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Victorian Tweets to Tickle Your Fancy
I browsed around Twitter today, and found the following gems! If you’re looking for some interesting, pretty, funny and inspiring tidbits of information, check out these tweets: Victorian Cat Funerals https://twitter.com/Felix_Ineptias/status/690755602310569984 Victorian Samplers embroidered by young girls https://twitter.com/fashionatbowes/status/690848757261451264 Digital Dickens-Finding Boz online https://twitter.com/LoyolaVictorian/status/712367387656454146 A 1898 Critic’s Choice List of Best Novels – Have you read them all? https://twitter.com/michaeljwaldron/status/661616977543364608 Victorian Spinning Tops, now in GIF form https://twitter.com/drreznicek/status/661890422382333952 Ode to Kate Greenaway, Victorian illustrator https://twitter.com/LadyReedmore/status/607056679679737857 Victorian Love Letters from a Valet to a Housekeeper https://twitter.com/rosalindmwhite/status/722462413682044929 Newly discovered Charlotte Bronte poem https://twitter.com/VictStudies/status/666306557995589636 Victorian Halloween Costumes https://twitter.com/VictStudies/status/651085330163101696 Why Victorians thought women taking Tea Breaks was…
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W.S. Gilbert: Writerly Beginnings
What is to become of me? Am I destined to revolutionize the art of comic writing? Am I the man who is destined to write the burlesques and extravaganzas of the future? Are managers of theaters and editors of light literature doomed to fall prostrate at my feet in humble obeisance? Is it to me that society at large must look for amusement for the next (say) forty years? To these questions I unhesitatingly reply, “I am! They are! It is!” – William S. Gilbert, writing as “A Trembling Beginner,” in The Art of Parody, Fun (9 Sept 1865) In 1861, W.S. Gilbert was a 25-year-old clerk in…
