Arthur Sullivan
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Sullivan’s Dilemma
Poor Arthur Sullivan! Though hailed as England’s answer to Mozart, honored with a knighthood at the relatively young age of 42, friend to the crowned heads of Europe and frequently ‘living large’ as a guest of royalty, happiness and health eluded him. Beginning in 1872 when he was 30 years old, Sullivan suffered from kidney stones. Wikipedia describes the pain as “excruciating, intermittent pain that radiates from the flank to the groin or to the inner thigh,” and says it’s one of the strongest pain sensations known. Surgical removal of stones was the best-known procedure at the time, but it had a high risk of death from bleeding and infection. Apparently,…
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Gilbert and Sullivan – Together
In the 1870s, Arthur Sullivan was a rising young composer whose reputation was growing steadily. At the same time, William S. Gilbert was a rising young dramatist whose plays were attracting an increasingly wider audience. They lived in the same city, they had friends in common, and each probably knew of the other’s work—we know Gilbert had heard Sullivan’s music, because he had reviewed Sullivan and Burnand’s operetta, Cox and Box, as the theater critic for Fun magazine. They had even collaborated on a Christmas entertainment, Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old. It was a successful venture in its limited way, but both men evidently considered the project a one-off.…
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The Sullivan – Edison Connection
The advent of sound recording both astonished and terrified Arthur Sullivan – astonished by its wonderful power, and terrified that “so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever.” For this comment, which has been put on record forever, we can thank George Edward Gouraud, an American war hero and a 19th century technology wonk. George’s father, a French engineer, came to America in 1839 to introduce daguerreotype photography to the United States. Young George was born in 1842, and he was orphaned when both his parents died five years later. He fought for the U.S. Army in the American Civil War, and received the Medal of…
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin – The Power of the Pen
“So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” Supposedly, this is what Abraham Lincoln said when he met Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862. In any event, her book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin had a deep and lasting impact on the public not only in America but around the world, according to the Harriet Beecher Stowe center. From that source I learned: Uncle Tom’s Cabin originally appeared in installments published in an anti-slavery newspaper, The National Era, in 1851. The next year it was published as a two-volume book. It sold 300,000 copies in its first year, and became the second best-selling book of the 19th century…
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Entertaining house guests, Victorian-style
Before the Internet—even before television and radio—beamed professional entertainment directly into our homes, what did people do for fun? Our Victorian ancestors, especially those of the middle and upper classes, had plenty of leisure time to fill. One way to enjoy oneself was to invite friends over to stay for a while—three days was the standard visit. But once you had your circle of intimates gathered at your country home, what were you to do with them? Welcoming your guests The proper time for arrival was mid-afternoon, around teatime. Guests often arrived by train, so a good host would arrange for the guests to be met at the train station.…
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Sir Arthur Sullivan – A Knight of the Realm
The year 1882 had brought financial reverses and difficulties to Arthur Sullivan. His physical health was declining, but he started the new year knowing he would have to work hard to regain his financial security. What would 1883 bring to him? In February, he signed a five-year contract with D’Oyly Carte and William S. Gilbert, which would provide him with one-third of the Savoy Theater’s net profits “after deducting all expenses and charges of producing the said operas.” By the spring of that year, Sullivan was involved with the preparations for the formal opening of the Royal College of Music. This school was to be a conservatory where top-notch musicians…
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Sir Arthur Sullivan’s Ivanhoe
Which has more artistic merit: Drama or Comedy? I bet most people would say that Drama, being more serious, sheds more light on the human condition. They might add that Comedy is more entertaining but less illuminating. This was the question Sir Arthur Sullivan faced around 1888 to 1891: Should England’s most highly lauded composer continue to write comic operas with W.S. Gilbert (the musical equivalent, one might say, of being a graphic novel illustrator who provides images that suit someone else’s story), or should he devote his time to Serious Music in the form of a grand opera (perhaps comparable to creating an original oil painting worthy of…
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Arthur Sullivan and The Golden Legend
Even successful artists like Sir Arthur Sullivan struggle with procrastination, goal-setting, and getting things done! In 1886, 44-year-old Arthur Sullivan was at the top of his career. He’d been knighted in 1883 for his services to music, his collaborations with WSGilbert had brought him a lot of success and financial reward, but success brought increasing pressure into his life. First, there was the pressure to write “serious music,” not comic operas or other popular stuff. High-minded critics thought that an ordinary tunesmith could write a comic opera, but a Knight of the Realm had to compose masterpieces, music for the ages. Second, success at any level comes with its own…
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Sullivan and the Crowned Heads of Europe
I love the old Victorian phrase, “the crowned heads of Europe” as a description of the members of the various royal families. It reminds me of the scene in The Wizard of Oz, where the wizard’s little wooden trailer is decorated on the side with the following legend: PROFESSOR MARVEL ACCLAIMED By The CROWNED HEADS of EUROPE Dorothy, of course, can’t help but read this boast, and since she wants to get away from Kansas, she pleads: DOROTHY: Oh, please, Professor, why can’t we go with you and see all the Crowned Heads of Europe? PROFESSOR: Do you know any? Oh, you mean the thing – Yes, well, I –…
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Young Arthur Sullivan, the Choirboy
Arthur Sullivan’s parents were poor but loving – his Irish father Thomas Sullivan was a music teacher and bandmaster at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst and his mother, Maria Clementina Coghlan, was the granddaughter of Joseph Righi, an Italian from what was then the Kingdom of Sardinia. Having experienced financial difficulties, Thomas and Clementina hoped that both their sons would enter into stable and respectable professions that would allow them to live comfortably. Their hopes never exactly turned out the way they planned! The older son, Frederick, started out as an architect but switched to acting and eventually made a name for himself as an actor and singer. In fact,…
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Arthur Sullivan’s Best and Worst Day
The worst of days and the best of days – that’s probably how Arthur Sullivan would describe the premiere of Iolanthe on November 25, 1882. The weeks leading up to the premiere were fraught with tension. To avoid American theatrical companies from pirating their work, Gilbert and Sullivan had arranged for two sets of casts—one in New York and one in London, so the premieres could be held at the same time and thus establish copyright in both places. Letters and transatlantic messages flew back and forth. The music was locked up every night to keep it safe from prying eyes, and during the rehearsals the main character was called…
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A Composer in the Wild, Wild West
When I think about the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, I see the courtier who entertained the crowned heads of Europe, playing the piano as an accompanist to Prince Albert’s violin, joking with the future Kaiser Wilhelm, or rubbing elbows with Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie in France. But Sir Arthur Sullivan also traveled across the American continent in 1885, heading for California to visit his brother’s children. This was during the wild, wild days of the Old West, and as he told his biographer Arthur Lawrence, along the way he had a little adventure at one particular stagecoach stop: Well, … some of my experiences have been very curious. Amongst…
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Sir Arthur Sullivan and the Lady
Arthur Sullivan’s early love affair with Rachel Scott Russell was doomed by “[her] vain mother who thought the young composer not good enough for her daughter to take in marriage.” (B.W. Findon, Sir Arthur Sullivan, p. 170) He never married. But he did have a life-long friend and lover—the American socialite and accomplished amateur contralto, Mary Frances “Fanny” Ronalds. She was considered a great beauty, with small and exquisitely regular features, abundant dark hair of a shade called châtain foncé (deep chestnut), a generous smile and beautiful teeth. Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1839, by age 20 the beautiful Mary Frances Carter was already known for her singing ability when…
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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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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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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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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…
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Black History Month: Black Victorians
In honor of Black History month, I’d like to share with you a few notes about Black Victorians – people of color who lived and prospered in England (and in America too) during the 19th century. Despite the prejudice and discrimination that people of color endured in Victorian England, there were a number of notable and distinguished black men and women in Britain. Mary Seacole (1805-1881) was born in Kingston, Jamaica, the daughter of a Scottish soldier and a Jamaican mother who taught her nursing. In 1854 she traveled to England and asked the War Office to send her to Crimea to nurse the wounded soldiers during the war. When…