D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
Encyclopedia
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
's Savoy opera
Savoy opera
The Savoy Operas denote a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house...
s. The company performed nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere, from the 1870s until it closed in 1982. It was revived in 1988 and played seasons in London and on shorter tours until 2003. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
praised "the company's unique performance style, which may be summarised as a combination of good taste and good fun".
In 1875, Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era...
asked the dramatist W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
and the composer Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
to collaborate on a short comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
to round out an evening's entertainment. When that work, Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its...
, became a success, Carte put together a syndicate to produce a full-length Gilbert and Sullivan work, The Sorcerer
The Sorcerer
The Sorcerer is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Arthur Sullivan. It was the British duo's third operatic collaboration. The plot of The Sorcerer is based on a Christmas story, An Elixir of Love, that Gilbert wrote for The Graphic magazine in 1876...
(1877), followed by H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...
(1878). After Pinafore became an international sensation, Carte jettisoned his difficult investors and formed a new partnership with Gilbert and Sullivan that became the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. The company produced the succeeding ten Gilbert and Sullivan operas and many other operas and companion pieces at the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...
in London, which Carte built in 1881 for that purpose. The company also mounted tours in Britain, New York and elsewhere, usually running several companies simultaneously. Carte's able assistant, Helen Lenoir, became his wife in 1888 and, after his death in 1901, she ran the company until her own death in 1913. By this time, it had become a year-round Gilbert and Sullivan touring repertory company.
Carte's son Rupert
Rupert D'Oyly Carte
Rupert D'Oyly Carte was an English hotelier, theatre owner and impresario, best known as proprietor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and Savoy Hotel from 1913 to 1948....
then inherited the company. Beginning in 1919, he mounted new seasons in London with new set and costume designs, while continuing the year-round tours in Britain and abroad. With the help of the director J. M. Gordon
J. M. Gordon
J. M. Gordon, was an English singer, actor, stage manager and director, best known as the influential long-time director of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company following the death of W. S. Gilbert.-Life and career:...
and the conductor Isidore Godfrey
Isidore Godfrey
Isidore Godfrey was musical director of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for 39 years, from 1929 to 1968...
, Carte ran the company for 35 years. He redesigned the Savoy Theatre in 1928 and sponsored a series of recordings over the years that helped to keep the operas popular. After Rupert's death in 1948, his daughter Bridget D'Oyly Carte
Bridget D'Oyly Carte
Dame Bridget Cicely D'Oyly Carte, DBE , was the granddaughter of impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte and the only daughter of Rupert D'Oyly Carte...
inherited the company and hired Frederic Lloyd
Frederic Lloyd
Frederic Lloyd, OBE , was an English theatre manager. Most notably, Lloyd was the General Manager of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1951 until its closure in 1982.-Biography:...
as general manager. The company continued to tour for 35 weeks each year, issue new recordings and play London seasons of Gilbert and Sullivan. In 1961, the last copyright on the Gilbert and Sullivan operas expired, and Bridget set up and endowed a charitable trust that presented the operas until mounting costs and a lack of public funding forced the closure of the company in 1982.
A new D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was formed in 1988 with a legacy left by Bridget D'Oyly Carte. It toured (although not continuously) and played London seasons of Gilbert and Sullivan operas and a few continental operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
s, also issuing some popular recordings. Denied significant funding from the English Arts Council
Arts Council of Great Britain
The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. The Arts Council of Great Britain was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England , the Scottish Arts Council, and the Arts Council of Wales...
, however, the new company was forced to suspend productions in 2003. Some of the company's performers, over the decades, became stars of their day and often moved on to careers in musical theatre
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
or grand opera
Grand Opera
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events...
. The company licensed the operas for performance in Australasia and to numerous amateur troupes in Britain and elsewhere, providing orchestra parts and prompt books for hire. The company kept the Savoy operas in the public eye for over a century and left an enduring legacy of production styles and stage business that continue to be emulated in new productions.
Beginnings
Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era...
, a musician and ambitious young impresario
Impresario
An impresario is a person who organizes and often finances concerts, plays or operas; analogous to a film producer in filmmaking, television production and an angel investor in business...
, had begun producing operettas in London. He announced his ambitions on the front of the programme for one of his productions that year: "It is my desire to establish in London a permanent abode for light opera." The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
reported, "Mr D'Oyly Carte is not only a skilful manager, but a trained musician, and he appears to have grasped the fact that the public are beginning to become weary of what is known as a genuine opera bouffe
Opéra bouffe
Opéra bouffe is a genre of late 19th-century French operetta, closely associated with Jacques Offenbach, who produced many of them at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens that gave its name to the form....
, and are ready to welcome a musical entertainment of a higher order, such as a musician might produce with satisfaction". He wanted to establish a body of tasteful English comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
that would appeal to families, in contrast to the bawdy burlesques and adaptations of French operettas and opera bouffes that dominated the London musical stage at that time.
In early 1875, Carte was managing London's Royalty Theatre
Royalty Theatre
The Royalty Theatre was a small London theatre situated at 73 Dean Street, Soho and opened on 25 May 1840 as Miss Kelly's Theatre and Dramatic School and finally closed to the public in 1938. The architect was Samuel Beazley, a resident in Soho Square, who also designed St James's Theatre, among...
. Needing a short piece to round out an evening's entertainment featuring the popular Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
operetta La Périchole
La Périchole
La Périchole is an opéra bouffe in three acts by Jacques Offenbach. Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy wrote the French-language libretto based on the 1829 one act play Le carrosse du Saint-Sacrement by Prosper Mérimée, which was revived on 13 March 1850 at the Théâtre-Français...
he brought W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
and Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
together. On tour in 1871, Carte had conducted Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
's one-act comic opera Cox and Box
Cox and Box
Cox and Box; or, The Long-Lost Brothers, is a one-act comic opera with a libretto by F. C. Burnand and music by Arthur Sullivan, based on the 1847 farce Box and Cox by John Maddison Morton. It was Sullivan's first successful comic opera. The story concerns a landlord who lets a room to two...
, which received an 1874 London revival. In 1873, W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
had offered a libretto to Carte about an English courtroom, but at the time Carte knew of no composer available to set it to music. Carte remembered Gilbert's libretto and suggested to Gilbert that Sullivan write the music for a one-act comic opera, Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its...
, which was quickly composed and added to the Royalty's bill in March 1875. The witty and "very English" little piece proved even more popular than La Périchole and became the first great success of Carte's scheme to found his school of English comic opera, playing for 300 performances from 1875 to 1877, as well as touring and enjoying many revivals.
In 1876, Carte found four financial backers
Equity partner
An equity partner is a partner in a partnership who is a part owner of the business, and is entitled to a proportion of the distributable profits of the partnership...
and formed the Comedy Opera Company in 1876 to produce more works by Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
, along with the works of other British lyricist/composer teams. With this theatre company, Carte finally had the financial resources, after many failed attempts, to produce a new full-length Gilbert and Sullivan opera. Carte leased the Opera Comique, a small theatre off The Strand
Strand, London
Strand is a street in the City of Westminster, London, England. The street is just over three-quarters of a mile long. It currently starts at Trafalgar Square and runs east to join Fleet Street at Temple Bar, which marks the boundary of the City of London at this point, though its historical length...
. The first comic opera produced by the Comedy Opera Company was Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer
The Sorcerer
The Sorcerer is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Arthur Sullivan. It was the British duo's third operatic collaboration. The plot of The Sorcerer is based on a Christmas story, An Elixir of Love, that Gilbert wrote for The Graphic magazine in 1876...
, about a tradesmanlike London sorcerer. It opened in November 1877 together with Dora's Dream
Dora's Dream
Dora's Dream is a one-act operetta, with music composed by Alfred Cellier and a libretto by Arthur Cecil.The piece was first performed at the Royal Gallery of Illustration on 3 July 1873, with Fanny Holland and Arthur Cecil starring in the two roles...
, a curtain-raiser with music by Sullivan's assistant Alfred Cellier
Alfred Cellier
Alfred Cellier was an English composer, orchestrator and conductor.In addition to conducting and music directing the original productions of several of the most famous Gilbert and Sullivan works and writing the overtures to some of them, Cellier conducted at many theatres in London, New York and...
and words by Arthur Cecil
Arthur Cecil
Arthur Cecil Blunt, better known as Arthur Cecil was an English actor, comedian, playwright and theatre manager. He is probably best remembered for playing the role of Box in the long-running production of Cox and Box, by Arthur Sullivan and F. C...
, a friend of both Gilbert's and Sullivan's.
Instead of writing a piece for production by a theatre proprietor, as was usual in Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
theatres, Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte produced the show with their own financial support. They were therefore able to select their own cast of performers, rather than being obliged to use the actors already engaged at the theatre. They chose talented actors, most of whom were not well-known stars and did not command high fees, and to whom they could teach a more naturalistic
Naturalism (theatre)
Naturalism is a movement in European drama and theatre that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It refers to theatre that attempts to create a perfect illusion of reality through a range of dramatic and theatrical strategies: detailed, three-dimensional settings Naturalism is a...
style of performance than was commonly used at the time. Carte's talent agency provided many of the artists to perform in the new work. They then tailored their work to the particular abilities of these performers. Some of the cast members, including principal comedian George Grossmith
George Grossmith
George Grossmith was an English comedian, writer, composer, actor, and singer. His performing career spanned more than four decades...
, Richard Temple and Rutland Barrington
Rutland Barrington
Rutland Barrington was an English singer, actor, comedian, and Edwardian musical comedy star. Best remembered for originating the lyric baritone roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas from 1877 to 1896, his performing career spanned more than four decades...
, stayed with the company for almost 15 years. Two other longstanding members of the company were Rosina Brandram
Rosina Brandram
Rosina Brandram was an English opera singer and actress primarily known for creating many of the contralto roles in the Savoy operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company....
, who started in D'Oyly Carte touring companies with The Sorcerer, and Jessie Bond
Jessie Bond
Jessie Bond was an English singer and actress best known for creating the mezzo-soprano soubrette roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. She spent twenty years on the stage, the bulk of them with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.Musical from an early age, Bond began a concert singing...
who joined the group for Pinafore at the Opera Comique in 1878. As Grossmith wrote in 1888, "We are all a very happy family."
Knowing that Gilbert and Sullivan shared his vision of broadening the audience for British light opera by increasing its quality and respectability, Carte gave Gilbert wider authority as a director than was customary among Victorian producers, and Gilbert tightly controlled all aspects of production, including staging, design and movement. Gilbert hired the Gaiety Theatre's
Gaiety Theatre, London
The Gaiety Theatre, London was a West End theatre in London, located on Aldwych at the eastern end of the Strand. The theatre was established as the Strand Musick Hall , in 1864 on the former site of the Lyceum Theatre. It was rebuilt several times, but closed from the beginning of World War II...
ballet-master John D'Auban
John D'Auban
Frederick John D'Auban was an English dancer, choreographer and actor of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Famous during his lifetime as the ballet-master at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, he is best remembered as the choreographer of many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.After performing as a...
to choreograph most of the Savoy operas. The skill with which Gilbert and Sullivan used their performers had an effect on the audience; as the critic Herman Klein
Herman Klein
Herman Klein was an English music critic, author and teacher of singing. Klein's famous brothers included Charles and Manuel Klein...
wrote: "we secretly marvelled at the naturalness and ease with which [the Gilbertian quips and absurdities] were said and done. For until then no living soul had seen upon the stage such weird, eccentric, yet intensely human beings .... [They] conjured into existence a hitherto unknown comic world of sheer delight." The Sorcerer ran for 178 performances, a healthy run at the time, making a profit, and Carte sent out a touring company in March 1878. Sheet music from the show sold well, and street musicians played the melodies. The success of The Sorcerer showed Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan that there was a future in family-friendly English comic opera.
Pinafore to Patience
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...
, opened in May 1878. The opera's initial slow business was generally ascribed to a heat wave that made the stuffy Opera Comique particularly uncomfortable. Carte's partners in the Comedy Opera Company lost confidence in the show and posted closing notices. After promotional efforts by Carte and Sullivan, who included some of the Pinafore music in several promenade concerts at Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, Pinafore became a hit. The Opera Comique was required to close at Christmas 1878 for repairs to drainage and sewage under the Public Health Act of 1875. Carte used the enforced closure of the theatre to invoke a contract clause reverting the rights of Pinafore and Sorcerer to Gilbert and Sullivan after the initial run of H.M.S. Pinafore. Carte then took a six-month personal lease on the theatre beginning on 1 February 1879. Carte persuaded Gilbert and Sullivan that when their original agreement with the Comedy Opera Company expired in July 1879, a business partnership among the three of them would be to their advantage. The three each put up £1,000 and formed a new partnership under the name "Mr Richard D'Oyly Carte's Opera Company". Under the partnership agreement, once the expenses of mounting the productions had been deducted, each of the three men was entitled to one third of the profits.
On 31 July 1879, the last day of their agreement with Gilbert and Sullivan, the directors of the Comedy Opera Company attempted to repossess the set by force during a performance, causing a celebrated fracas. Carte's stagehands managed to ward off their backstage attackers and protect the scenery. The Comedy Opera Company opened a rival production of H.M.S. Pinafore in London, but it was not as popular as the D'Oyly Carte production, and soon closed. Legal action over the ownership of the rights ended in victory for Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan. From 1 August 1879, the company, later called the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, became the sole authorised producer of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.
Pinafore became so successful that the piano score sold 10,000 copies, and Carte soon sent two additional companies out to tour in the provinces. The opera ran for 571 performances in London, the second longest run in musical theatre history up to that time. Over 150 unauthorised productions sprang up in America alone, but because American law then offered no copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
protection to foreigners, Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte had no way to prevent them. To try to make some money from the popularity of their opera in America, Carte travelled to New York with Gilbert, Sullivan and the company to present an "authentic" production of Pinafore on Broadway, beginning in December 1879, also mounting American tours. Beginning with Pinafore, Carte licensed the J. C. Williamson
J. C. Williamson
James Cassius Williamson was an American actor and later Australia's foremost theatrical manager, founding J. C. Williamson Ltd....
company to produce the works in Australia and New Zealand.
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...
, Carte and his partners opened it in New York on 31 December 1879, prior to its 1880 London premiere. Pirates was the only Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
opera to have its official premiere in America. Carte and his partners hoped to forestall further "piracy" by establishing the authorised production and tours in America before others could copy it and by delaying publication of the score and libretto. They did succeed in keeping for themselves the direct profits of the venture, but they tried without success for many years to control the American performance copyrights over their operas. Pirates was an immediate hit in New York, and later London, becoming one of the most popular Gilbert and Sullivan operas. To secure the British copyright, there was a perfunctory performance the afternoon before the New York premiere, at the Royal Bijou Theatre, Paignton
Paignton
Paignton is a coastal town in Devon in England. Together with Torquay and Brixham it forms the unitary authority of Torbay which was created in 1998. The Torbay area is a holiday destination known as the English Riviera. Paignton's population in the United Kingdom Census of 2001 was 48,251. It has...
, Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
, organised by Helen Lenoir.
The next Gilbert and Sullivan opera, Patience
Patience (opera)
Patience; or, Bunthorne's Bride, is a comic opera in two acts with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. First performed at the Opera Comique, London, on 23 April 1881, it moved to the 1,292-seat Savoy Theatre on 10 October 1881, where it was the first theatrical production in the...
, opened at the Opera Comique in April 1881 and was another big success, becoming the second longest-running piece in the series and enjoying numerous foreign productions. Patience satirised the self-indulgent Aesthetic movement
Aestheticism
Aestheticism was a 19th century European art movement that emphasized aesthetic values more than socio-political themes for literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design...
of the 1870s and '80s in England, part of the 19th century European movement that emphasised aesthetic values over moral or social themes in literature, fine art
Fine art
Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....
, the decorative arts, and interior design. From the beginning, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company established strict rules for its actors and actresses, to avoid any hint of scandal such as performers were accused of in other companies. As Jessie Bond described in her autobiography:
No lingering about was allowed, no gossiping with the other actors; the women’s dressing-rooms were on one side of the stage, the men’s on the other, and when we were not actually playing we had to mount at once our respective narrow staircases – sheep rigorously separated from the goats! Once, when my mother came to see me in London, expecting to find me dwelling in haunts of gilded luxury, and far down the road to perdition, I took her behind the scenes and showed her the arrangements for the actors and actresses, conventual in their austerity. ... I think there never was a theatre run on lines of such strict propriety; no breath of scandal ever touched it in all the twenty years of my experience. Gilbert would suffer no loose word or gesture either behind the stage or on it, and watched over us young women like a dragon.
Adelina Patti
Adelina Patti was a highly acclaimed 19th-century opera singer, earning huge fees at the height of her career in the music capitals of Europe and America. She first sang in public as a child in 1851 and gave her last performance before an audience in 1914...
, Clara Schumann
Clara Schumann
Clara Schumann was a German musician and composer, considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era...
, Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
and Charles Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
), Carte bought property along the Strand with frontage onto the Thames Embankment, where he built the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...
in 1881. He chose the name in honour of the Savoy Palace
Savoy Palace
The Savoy Palace was considered the grandest nobleman's residence of medieval London, until it was destroyed in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. It fronted the Strand, on the site of the present Savoy Theatre and the Savoy Hotel that memorialise its name...
. The Savoy Theatre was a state-of-the-art facility, setting a new standard for technology, comfort and decor. It was the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electric lights and seated nearly 1,300 people (compared to the Opera Comique's 862).
Patience was the first production at the new theatre, transferring there on 10 October 1881. The first generator proved too small to power the whole building, and though the entire front-of-house was electrically lit, the stage was lit by gas until 28 December 1881. At that performance, Carte stepped on stage and broke a glowing lightbulb before the audience to demonstrate the safety of the new technology. The Times concluded that the theatre "is admirably adapted for its purpose, its acoustic qualities are excellent, and all reasonable demands of comfort and taste are complied with." Carte and his manager, George Edwardes
George Edwardes
George Joseph Edwardes was an English theatre manager of Irish ancestry who brought a new era in musical theatre to the British stage and beyond....
(later famous as manager of the Gaiety Theatre
Gaiety Theatre, London
The Gaiety Theatre, London was a West End theatre in London, located on Aldwych at the eastern end of the Strand. The theatre was established as the Strand Musick Hall , in 1864 on the former site of the Lyceum Theatre. It was rebuilt several times, but closed from the beginning of World War II...
), introduced several innovations at the theatre, including numbered seating, free programme booklets, the "queue" system for the pit and gallery (an American idea) and a policy of no tipping for cloakroom or other services. Daily expenses at the theatre were about half the possible takings from ticket sales. The last eight of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas were premièred at the Savoy.
During the years when the Gilbert and Sullivan operas were being written, the company also produced operas by other composer–librettist teams, either as curtain-raisers to the Gilbert and Sullivan pieces, or as touring productions, as well as other works to fill the Savoy Theatre in between Savoy operas, and Carte also toured the Gilbert and Sullivan operas extensively. For example, a souvenir programme commemorating the 250th performance of Patience in London and its 100th performance in New York shows that, aside from these two productions of Patience, Carte was simultaneously producing two companies touring with Patience, two companies touring with other Gilbert and Sullivan operas, a company touring with Olivette (co-produced with Charles Wyndham) a company touring Claude Duval
Claude Duval (opera)
Claude Duval – or Love and Larceny is a comic opera with music by Edward Solomon to a libretto by Henry Pottinger Stephens. The plot is loosely based on supposed events in the life of the eighteenth century highwayman, Claude Duval....
in America, a production of Youth running at a New York theatre, a lecture tour by Archibald Forbes (a war correspondent) and productions of Patience, Pirates, Claude Duval and Billee Taylor
Billee Taylor
Billee Taylor, or The Reward of Virtue is "a nautical comedy opera" by Edward Solomon, with a libretto by Henry Pottinger Stephens.The piece was first produced at the Imperial Theatre in London on 30 October 1880, starring Arthur Williams as Sir Mincing Lane and Frederick Rivers as Billee. It...
in association with J. C. Williamson
J. C. Williamson
James Cassius Williamson was an American actor and later Australia's foremost theatrical manager, founding J. C. Williamson Ltd....
in Australia, among other things.
In the 1880s, Carte also introduced the practice of licensing amateur theatrical societies to present works for which he held the rights, increasing their popularity and the sales of scores and libretti, as well as the rental of band parts. This had an important influence on amateur theatre in general. Cellier and Bridgeman wrote in 1914 that, prior to the creation of the Savoy opera
Savoy opera
The Savoy Operas denote a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house...
s, amateur actors were treated with contempt by professionals. After the formation of amateur Gilbert and Sullivan companies licensed to perform the operas, professionals recognised that the amateur societies "support the culture of music and the drama. They are now accepted as useful training schools for the legitimate stage, and from the volunteer ranks have sprung many present-day favourites." Cellier and Bridgeman attributed the rise in quality and reputation of the amateur groups largely to "the popularity of, and infectious craze for performing, the Gilbert and Sullivan operas". The National Operatic and Dramatic Association
National Operatic and Dramatic Association
NODA has a membership of 2500 amateur theatre groups and 3000 individual enthusiasts throughout the UK, staging musicals, operas, plays, concerts and pantomimes in a wide variety of performing venues, ranging from the country’s leading professional theatres to tiny village halls.Founded in 1899,...
was founded in 1899. It reported, in 1914, that nearly 200 British societies were producing Gilbert and Sullivan operas that year. Carte insisted that amateur companies follow the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company staging, using its prompt books. Even after the copyrights expired at the end of 1961, the company continued to, and still does, rent out band parts to companies around the world.
Iolanthe to The Gondoliers
After Patience, the company produced IolantheIolanthe
Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh collaboration of the fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan....
, which opened in 1882. During its run, in February 1883, Carte signed a five-year partnership agreement with Gilbert and Sullivan, obligating them to create new operas for the company upon six months' notice. Sullivan had not intended immediately to write a new work with Gilbert, but he suffered a serious financial loss when his broker went bankrupt in November 1882 and must have felt the long-term contract necessary for his security. But he soon felt trapped. Gilbert scholar Andrew Crowther comments, regarding the agreement: "Effectively, it made [Gilbert and Sullivan] Carte's employees – a situation which created its own resentments." The partnership's next opera, Princess Ida
Princess Ida
Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was their eighth operatic collaboration of fourteen. Princess Ida opened at the Savoy Theatre on January 5, 1884, for a run of 246 performances...
, opened in January 1884. Carte soon saw that Ida was running weakly at the box office and invoked the agreement to call upon his partners for a new opera to be written. Almost from the beginning of the partnership, the musical establishment put pressure on Sullivan to abandon comic opera, and he soon regretted having signed the five-year contract. In March 1884, Sullivan told Carte that "it is impossible for me to do another piece of the character of those already written by Gilbert and myself."
The company produced the first revival of The Sorcerer, together with Trial by Jury, and matinees of The Pirates of Penzance played by a cast of children, while waiting for the new work to be completed. This became the partnership's most successful opera, The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...
, which opened in March 1885. The piece satirised British institutions by setting them in a fictional Japan. At the same time, it took advantage of the Victorian craze for the exotic Far East using the "picturesque" scenery and costumes of Japan. The Mikado became the partnership's longest-running hit, enjoying 672 performances at the Savoy Theatre, the second longest run for any work of musical theatre up to that time, and it was extraordinarily popular in the U.S. and worldwide. It remains the most frequently performed Savoy opera. Beginning with The Mikado, Hawes Craven
Hawes Craven
Henry Hawes Craven Green was an English theatre scene-painter. He collaborated with Henry Irving, Richard D'Oyly Carte and Herbert Beerbohm Tree, producing stage sets of unprecedented realism...
, the designer of the sets for Henry Irving
Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...
's spectacular Shakespeare productions at the Lyceum Theatre, designed all of the D'Oyly Carte sets until 1893.
The partnership's next opera was Ruddigore
Ruddigore
Ruddigore; or, The Witch's Curse, originally called Ruddygore, is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy Operas and the tenth of fourteen comic operas written together by Gilbert and Sullivan...
, which opened in January 1887. It satirised and used elements of Victorian stock melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
. The piece, though profitable, was a relative disappointment after the extraordinary success of The Mikado. When Ruddigore closed after a run of only nine months, the company mounted revivals of earlier Gilbert and Sullivan operas for almost a year. After another attempt by Gilbert to persuade Sullivan to set a "lozenge plot", Gilbert met his collaborator half way by writing a serio-comic plot for The Yeomen of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard; or, The Merryman and His Maid, is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 3 October 1888, and ran for 423 performances...
, which premiered in October 1888. The opera was a success, running for over a year, with strong New York and touring productions. During the run, in March 1889, Sullivan again expressed reluctance to write another comic opera, asking if Gilbert would write a "dramatic work on a larger musical scale". Gilbert declined, but offered a compromise that Sullivan ultimately accepted: The two would write a light opera for the Savoy, and at the same time, Sullivan could work on a grand opera (Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe (opera)
Ivanhoe is a romantic opera in three acts based on the novel by Sir Walter Scott, with music by Sir Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by Julian Sturgis. It premiered at the Royal English Opera House on 31 January 1891 for a consecutive run of 155 performances, unheard of for a grand opera...
) for a new theatre that Carte was constructing to present British grand opera. The new comic opera was The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for a very successful 554 performances , closing on 30 June 1891...
, which opened in December 1889 and became one of the partnership's greatest successes. After Carte's first wife died in 1885, Carte married Helen Lenoir in 1888, who was, by this time, nearly as important in managing the company as Carte himself.
Royal Command Performance
For the annual Royal Variety Performance performed in Britain for the benefit of the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund, see Royal Variety Performance...
of The Gondoliers at Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it...
in 1891. George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, writing in The World in October 1893, commented, "Those who are old enough to compare the Savoy performances with those of the dark ages, taking into account the pictorial treatment of the fabrics and colours on the stage, the cultivation and intelligence of the choristers, the quality of the orchestra, and the degree of artistic good breeding, so to speak, expected from the principals, best know how great an advance has been made by Mr. D'Oyly Carte."
The Carpet Quarrel and the end of the partnership
On 22 April 1890, during the run of The Gondoliers, Gilbert discovered that maintenance expenses for the theatre, including a new £500 carpet for the front lobby of the theatre, were being charged to the partnership instead of borne by Carte. Gilbert confronted Carte, and Carte refused to reconsider the accounts: Even though the amount of the charge was not great, Gilbert felt it was a moral issue involving Carte's integrity, and he could not look past it. Gilbert wrote in a letter to Sullivan that "I left him with the remark that it was a mistake to kick down the ladder by which he had risen". Helen Carte wrote that Gilbert had addressed Carte "in a way that I should not have thought you would have used to an offending menial." Gilbert brought a lawsuit, but Sullivan sided with Carte, who was building the Royal English Opera HousePalace Theatre, London
The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. It is an imposing red-brick building that dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus and is located near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road...
, the inaugural production of which was to be Sullivan's forthcoming grand opera. Gilbert won the suit, but the partnership disbanded.
Sullivan's opera, Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe (opera)
Ivanhoe is a romantic opera in three acts based on the novel by Sir Walter Scott, with music by Sir Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by Julian Sturgis. It premiered at the Royal English Opera House on 31 January 1891 for a consecutive run of 155 performances, unheard of for a grand opera...
, had a successful run, but no other operas shared Carte's new opera house, and so the theatre soon failed. Carte sold the opera house, and it eventually became the Palace Theatre
Palace Theatre, London
The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. It is an imposing red-brick building that dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus and is located near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road...
.
After The Gondoliers closed in 1891, Gilbert withdrew the performance rights to his libretti and vowed to write no more operas for the Savoy. The D'Oyly Carte company turned to new writing teams for the Savoy, first producing The Nautch Girl
The Nautch Girl
thumb|right|250px|Solomon , with Gilbert and Sullivan irate at his success at the SavoyThe Nautch Girl, or, The Rajah of Chutneypore is a comic opera in two acts, with a book by George Dance, lyrics by Dance and Frank Desprez and music by Edward Solomon...
, by George Dance
George Dance (dramatist)
George Dance was an English lyricist and librettist in the 1890s and an important theatrical manager at the beginning of the 20th century....
, Frank Desprez
Frank Desprez
Frank Desprez was an English playwright, essayist, and poet. He wrote more than twenty pieces for the theatre, as well as numerous shorter works, including his famous poem, Lasca.-Life and career:...
and Edward Solomon
Edward Solomon
Edward Solomon was a prolific English composer, as well as a conductor, orchestrator and pianist. Though he died before his fortieth birthday, he wrote dozens of works produced for the stage, including several for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, such as The Nautch Girl, among others.-Early...
, which ran for a satisfying 200 performances in 1891–92. Next was a revival of Solomon and Sydney Grundy
Sydney Grundy
Sydney Grundy was an English dramatist. Most of his works were adaptations of European plays, and many became successful enough to tour throughout the English-speaking world...
's The Vicar of Bray
The Vicar of Bray (opera)
The Vicar of Bray is a comic opera by Edward Solomon with a libretto by Sydney Grundy which opened at the Globe Theatre, in London, on 22 July 1882, for a run of only 69 performances. The public was not amused at a clergyman's being made the subject of ridicule, and the opera was regarded by some...
, which played through the summer of 1892. Grundy and Sullivan's Haddon Hall
Haddon Hall (opera)
Haddon Hall is an English light opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by Sydney Grundy. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on September 24, 1892 for a modestly successful run of 204 performances...
then held the stage until April 1893. While the company presented new pieces and revivals at the Savoy, Carte's touring companies continued to play throughout Britain and in America. In 1894, for example, Carte had four companies touring Britain and one playing in America.
Chappell & Co.
Chappell & Co. was an English company that published music and manufactured pianos.-History:It was founded in 1810 by Samuel Chappell in partnership with music professors Francis Tatton Latour and Johann Baptist Cramer. Cramer was also a well-known London composer, teacher and pianist...
, who published the sheet music to the Savoy operas. In 1893, the company produced the penultimate Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration, Utopia, Limited
Utopia, Limited
Utopia, Limited; or, The Flowers of Progress, is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was the second-to-last of Gilbert and Sullivan's fourteen collaborations, premiering on 7 October 1893 for a run of 245 performances...
. While Utopia was being prepared, the company produced Jane Annie
Jane Annie
Jane Annie, or The Good Conduct Prize is an opera written in 1893 by J. M. Barrie and Arthur Conan Doyle, with music by Ernest Ford, a conductor and occasional composer....
, by J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...
and Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
, with music by Ernest Ford
Ernest Ford
Ernest A. Claire Ford was an English composer of operas and ballet music and a conductor.-Life and career:Ford was born in Warminster, Wiltshire, England, the son of the vestry clerk and organist there. From 1868-73, he sang in the chorus at Salisbury Cathedral...
. Despite the popularity of Barrie and Conan Doyle, the show was a flop, closing in July 1893 after only 51 performances. Utopia was the Savoy's most expensive production to date, but it ran for a comparatively disappointing 245 performances, until June 1894, turning a very modest profit. The company then played first Mirette
Mirette (opera)
Mirette is an opéra comique in three acts composed by André Messager, first produced at the Savoy Theatre, London, on 3 July 1894.Mirette exists in two distinct versions. The first version of the libretto was written in French by Michel Carré but this was never performed. English lyrics were...
, composed by André Messager
André Messager
André Charles Prosper Messager , was a French composer, organist, pianist, conductor and administrator. His stage compositions included ballets and 30 opéra comiques and operettas, among which Véronique, had lasting success, with Les p'tites Michu and Monsieur Beaucaire also enjoying international...
, then The Chieftain
The Chieftain
The Chieftain is a two-act comic opera by Arthur Sullivan and F. C. Burnand based on their 1867 opera, The Contrabandista. It consists of substantially the same first act as the 1867 work with a completely new second act...
, by F. C. Burnand
Francis Burnand
Sir Francis Cowley Burnand , often credited as F. C. Burnand, was an English comic writer and dramatist....
and Sullivan. These ran for 102 and 97 performances, respectively. After The Chieftain closed, the company toured the London suburbs, while Carte leased the Savoy Theatre to the Carl Rosa Opera Company
Carl Rosa Opera Company
The Carl Rosa Opera Company was founded in 1873 by Carl August Nicholas Rosa, a German-born musical impresario, to present opera in English in London and the British provinces. The company survived Rosa's death in 1889, and continued to present opera in English on tour until 1960, when it was...
. The theatre was dark during the summer of 1895, reopening in November for a revival of The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...
. This was followed by The Grand Duke
The Grand Duke
The Grand Duke; or, The Statutory Duel, is the final Savoy Opera written by librettist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan, their fourteenth and last opera together. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on March 7, 1896, and ran for 123 performances...
, in 1896, which ran for 123 performances and was Gilbert and Sullivan's only financial failure. The Gondoliers turned out to be Gilbert and Sullivan's last big hit, and after The Grand Duke, the two men never collaborated again.
In 1894, Carte had hired his son, Rupert
Rupert D'Oyly Carte
Rupert D'Oyly Carte was an English hotelier, theatre owner and impresario, best known as proprietor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and Savoy Hotel from 1913 to 1948....
, as an assistant. Rupert assisted Mrs. Carte and W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
with the first revival of The Yeomen of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard; or, The Merryman and His Maid, is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 3 October 1888, and ran for 423 performances...
at the Savoy in May 1897. Throughout the later 1890s, Carte's health was declining, and Mrs. Carte assumed more and more of the responsibilities of running the opera company. She profitably managed the theatre and the provincial touring companies. The Savoy's shows during this period received comparatively short runs, including His Majesty (1897), The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein (1897), The Beauty Stone
The Beauty Stone
The Beauty Stone is an opera, billed as a "romantic musical drama" in three acts, composed by Arthur Sullivan to a libretto by Arthur Wing Pinero and J. Comyns Carr. The medieval Faustian story concerns an ugly, crippled girl, who dreams of being beautiful and meeting a handsome prince. The Devil...
(1898) and The Lucky Star
The Lucky Star
The Lucky Star is an English comic opera, in three acts, composed by Ivan Caryll, with dialogue by Charles H. Brookfield and lyrics by Adrian Ross and Aubrey Hopwood...
(1899), as well as revivals of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Sullivan's The Beauty Stone ran for only 50 performances. In 1899, the Savoy finally had a new success, with Sullivan and Basil Hood
Basil Hood
Basil Willett Charles Hood was a British librettist and lyricist, perhaps best known for writing the libretti of half a dozen Savoy Operas and for his English adaptations of operettas, including The Merry Widow. He embarked on a career in the British army, writing theatrical pieces in his spare...
's The Rose of Persia
The Rose of Persia
The Rose of Persia; or, The Story-Teller and the Slave, is a two-act comic opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by Basil Hood. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 29 November 1899, closing on 28 June 1900 after a profitable run of 211 performances...
, which ran for 213 performances. Neither Carte nor Sullivan lived to see the production of Sullivan and Hood's The Emerald Isle
The Emerald Isle
The Emerald Isle; or, The Caves of Carrig-Cleena, is a two-act comic opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and Edward German, and a libretto by Basil Hood. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 27 April 1901, closing on 9 November 1901 after a run of 205 performances...
(1901), for which Edward German
Edward German
Sir Edward German was an English musician and composer of Welsh descent, best remembered for his extensive output of incidental music for the stage and as a successor to Arthur Sullivan in the field of English comic opera.As a youth, German played the violin and led the town orchestra, also...
completed the score.
Early 20th century
Carte left his theatre, opera company and hotels to his wife, who assumed full control of the family businesses. Her London and touring companies continued to present the Savoy operas in Britain and overseas. She leased the Savoy Theatre to William GreetWilliam Greet
William Greet was a British theatre manager from the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century. Originally a business manager for other theatre licensees in the 1880s, he branched out as an independent manager in the 1890s and was associated with various London theatres, principally the...
in 1901 and oversaw his management of the company's revival of Iolanthe and the production of several new comic operas, including The Emerald Isle
The Emerald Isle
The Emerald Isle; or, The Caves of Carrig-Cleena, is a two-act comic opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and Edward German, and a libretto by Basil Hood. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 27 April 1901, closing on 9 November 1901 after a run of 205 performances...
(1901), Merrie England
Merrie England (opera)
Merrie England is an English comic opera in two acts by Edward German to a libretto by Basil Hood. The patriotic story concerns love and rivalries at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, who is portrayed as jealous of the affection of Sir Walter Raleigh for Bessie Throckmorton. Its sunny depiction of...
(1902) and A Princess of Kensington
A Princess of Kensington
A Princess of Kensington is an English comic opera in two acts by Edward German to a libretto by Basil Hood, produced by William Greet. The first performance was at the Savoy Theatre, London, on 22 January 1903 and ran for 115 performances....
(with music by Edward German
Edward German
Sir Edward German was an English musician and composer of Welsh descent, best remembered for his extensive output of incidental music for the stage and as a successor to Arthur Sullivan in the field of English comic opera.As a youth, German played the violin and led the town orchestra, also...
, libretto by Basil Hood
Basil Hood
Basil Willett Charles Hood was a British librettist and lyricist, perhaps best known for writing the libretti of half a dozen Savoy Operas and for his English adaptations of operettas, including The Merry Widow. He embarked on a career in the British army, writing theatrical pieces in his spare...
), which ran for four months in early 1903 and then toured. When A Princess of Kensington closed at the Savoy, Mrs. Carte leased the theatre to other managements until 8 December 1906. The company's fortunes declined for a time, and by 1904 there was only a single touring company wending its way through the British provinces, when it took a seven-month South African tour.
In 1906–07, Mrs. Carte staged a repertory season at the Savoy Theatre, with Gilbert returning to direct. The season, which included Yeomen, The Gondoliers, Patience and Iolanthe, was a sensation and led to another in 1908–09 including The Mikado, Pinafore, Iolanthe, Pirates, The Gondoliers and Yeomen. Afterwards, however, Mrs. Carte's health prevented her from staging more London seasons. She retired and leased the theatre to C. H. Workman, and the company did not perform in London again until 1919, although it continued to tour throughout Britain.
J. M. Gordon
J. M. Gordon, was an English singer, actor, stage manager and director, best known as the influential long-time director of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company following the death of W. S. Gilbert.-Life and career:...
as stage manager. Gordon, who was promoted to stage director in 1922, had been a member of the company and a stage manager under Gilbert's direction, and he fiercely preserved the company's performing traditions in exacting detail for 28 years. Except for Ruddigore
Ruddigore
Ruddigore; or, The Witch's Curse, originally called Ruddygore, is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy Operas and the tenth of fourteen comic operas written together by Gilbert and Sullivan...
, which underwent some cuts and received a new overture, very few changes were made to the text and music of the operas as Gilbert and Sullivan had produced them, and the company stayed true to Gilbert's period settings. The traditions evolved over time, after Gordon's death, but many of Gilbert's directorial concepts survived, both in the stage directions printed in the libretti and as preserved in company prompt books from the era. Original choreography was also maintained. In addition, some of the staging added over the years became traditional and was repeated again and again in successive productions. Many of these traditional stagings are imitated today in productions by both amateur and professional companies.
Helen Carte died in 1913, and Carte's son Rupert D'Oyly Carte
Rupert D'Oyly Carte
Rupert D'Oyly Carte was an English hotelier, theatre owner and impresario, best known as proprietor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and Savoy Hotel from 1913 to 1948....
inherited the company. During World War I, he was away serving in the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
. According to H. M. Walbrook, "Through the years of the Great War [the company] continued to be on tour through the country, drawing large and grateful audiences everywhere. They helped to sustain the spirits of the people during that stern period, and by so doing they helped to win the victory." The company also toured in North America several times, beginning with a Canadian tour in 1927.
Rupert D'Oyly Carte found the company's productions increasingly "dowdy", however, and on his return from the war, he determined to refresh them, bringing in new designers including W. Bridges-Adams for the sets, and, for the costumes, George Sheringham
George Sheringham
George Sheringham , was a British painter and theatre designer. One of the first recipients of the Royal Designers for Industry distinction in 1937, he is remembered for his work for the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company....
and Hugo Rumbold
Hugo Rumbold
Hugo Cecil Levinge Rumbold was a British theatrical scenery and costume designer.-Life and career:Rumbold was the son of Sir Horace Rumbold, eighth baronet of Woodhall , and his second wife, Louisa Anne , daughter of Thomas Russell Crampton...
. He also commissioned new costumes from Percy Anderson
Percy Anderson
Percy Anderson was an English stage designer and painter, best known for his work for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's company at His Majesty’s Theatre and Edwardian musical comedies.-Life and career:...
who had worked with Gilbert and Richard D'Oyly Carte on the original productions of the later Savoy operas. Charles Ricketts
Charles Ricketts
Charles de Sousy Ricketts was a versatile English artist, illustrator, author and printer, and is best known for his work as book designer and typographer from 1896 to 1904 with the Vale Press, and his work in the theatre as a set and costume designer.-Life and career:Ricketts was born in Geneva...
redesigned sets and costumes for The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...
(1926) and The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for a very successful 554 performances , closing on 30 June 1891...
(1929). His costumes for The Mikado were retained by all subsequent designers until 1982. In an interview in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
in August 1919, Carte set out his policy for staging the operas: "They will be played precisely in their original form, without any alteration to the words, or any attempt to bring them up to date." This uncompromising declaration was modified in a later interview in which he said, "the plays are all being restaged. ... Gilbert's words will be unaltered, though there will be some freshness in the method of rendering them. Artists must have scope for their individuality, and new singers cannot be tied down to imitate slavishly those who made successes in the old days."
Shaftesbury Theatre
The Shaftesbury Theatre is a West End Theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue, in the London Borough of Camden.-History:The theatre was designed for the brothers Walter and Frederick Melville by Bertie Crewe and opened on 26 December 1911 with a production of The Three Musketeers, as the New...
, playing most of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas in repertory and showing off the new sets and costumes. The success of this season led to additional London seasons in 1919–20, 1921–22, 1924, and 1926; the company toured the rest of the year. Carte's first London season stimulated renewed interest in the operas, and by 1920 he had established a second, smaller company to tour smaller towns. It was disbanded in 1927, although the company often ran multiple tours simultaneously.
For London seasons, Carte engaged guest conductors, first Geoffrey Toye
Geoffrey Toye
Edward Geoffrey Toye , better known as Geoffrey Toye, was an English conductor, composer and opera producer....
, then Malcolm Sargent
Malcolm Sargent
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works...
, who examined Sullivan's manuscript scores and purged the orchestral parts of accretions. So striking was the orchestral sound produced by Sargent that the press thought he had retouched the scores, and Carte had the pleasant duty of correcting their error. In a letter to The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, he noted that "the details of the orchestration sounded so fresh that some of the critics thought them actually new... the opera was played last night exactly as written by Sullivan." Carte also hired Harry Norris
Harry Norris (conductor)
Harry Norris was a New Zealand-born conductor best remembered as musical director of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company between 1919 and 1929. After leaving that company, Norris emigrated to Canada to teach but returned to retire in England in the 1960s.-Life and career:Norris was born in...
, who started with the touring company, then was Toye's assistant before becoming musical director.
In 1917, the company made the first complete recording of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...
, for the Gramophone Company
Gramophone Company
The Gramophone Company, based in the United Kingdom, was one of the early recording companies, and was the parent organization for the famous "His Master's Voice" label...
(later known as His Master's Voice). Rupert D'Oyly Carte supervised the company's recordings, including eight more acoustic recordings by 1924, and a series of complete electrical recordings in the late 1920s and early 1930s. There were additional recordings, in high fidelity, for Decca Records
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
, in the late 1940s and early 1950s and stereo recordings in the late 1950s and early 1960s, all supervised after Rupert's death by his daughter, Bridget D'Oyly Carte
Bridget D'Oyly Carte
Dame Bridget Cicely D'Oyly Carte, DBE , was the granddaughter of impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte and the only daughter of Rupert D'Oyly Carte...
.
The new Savoy Theatre
Rupert D'Oyly Carte also redesigned the Savoy Theatre. On 3 June 1929 the Savoy closed, and it was completely rebuilt to designs by Frank A. Tugwell with décor by Basil IonidesBasil Ionides
Basil Ionides was a British architect who published two best-selling books, Colour and Interior Decoration and Colour in Everyday Rooms...
. The old house had three tiers; the new one had two. The seating capacity was increased from 986 to 1,158. The theatre reopened 135 days later on 21 October 1929, with The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for a very successful 554 performances , closing on 30 June 1891...
, designed by Ricketts and conducted by Sargent. George Sheringham
George Sheringham
George Sheringham , was a British painter and theatre designer. One of the first recipients of the Royal Designers for Industry distinction in 1937, he is remembered for his work for the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company....
designed new productions that season of H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...
, The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...
, and Patience
Patience (opera)
Patience; or, Bunthorne's Bride, is a comic opera in two acts with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. First performed at the Opera Comique, London, on 23 April 1881, it moved to the 1,292-seat Savoy Theatre on 10 October 1881, where it was the first theatrical production in the...
(1929, with other designs contributed by Hugo Rumbold
Hugo Rumbold
Hugo Cecil Levinge Rumbold was a British theatrical scenery and costume designer.-Life and career:Rumbold was the son of Sir Horace Rumbold, eighth baronet of Woodhall , and his second wife, Louisa Anne , daughter of Thomas Russell Crampton...
), and he later designed costumes for Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its...
and Iolanthe
Iolanthe
Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh collaboration of the fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan....
.
The Savoy also hosted London seasons for the company in 1930–31, 1933, 1941, 1951, 1954, 1961, 1963–64, and 1975. London seasons at other theatres, mostly Sadler's Wells
Sadler's Wells Theatre
Sadler's Wells Theatre is a performing arts venue located in Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell in the London Borough of Islington. The present day theatre is the sixth on the site since 1683. It consists of two performance spaces: a 1,500 seat main auditorium and the Lilian Baylis Studio, with extensive...
, included summer seasons from 1935 to 1939, 1942, 1947 to 1950, 1953, 1971, 1975, 1977 and 1980; and winter seasons in 1956–57, 1958–59, 1960–61, 1963–63, 1965–66, 1967–68, and then every winter between 1969–70 and 1981–82. The company continued to tour the British provinces and abroad when it was not in London, and these tours also often included London suburbs. The company's musical director from 1929 (having been assistant musical director from 1925) was Isidore Godfrey
Isidore Godfrey
Isidore Godfrey was musical director of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for 39 years, from 1929 to 1968...
, who retained the position until 1968 and guest conducted the company in 1975, as part of the centenary season at the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...
. Guest conductors during Godfrey's tenure were Sargent and Boyd Neel
Boyd Neel
Louis Boyd Neel was an English conductor and academic. He is perhaps best known for revitalizing the genre of the chamber orchestra.-Early years:...
. Henry Lytton
Henry Lytton
Sir Henry Lytton was an English actor and singer who was the leading exponent of the comic patter-baritone roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operas in the early part of the twentieth century...
retired in 1934 after a quarter century as the principal comedian, and the company made a highly successful eight-month North American tour with its new principal comedian, Martyn Green
Martyn Green
William Martyn-Green , better known as Martyn Green, was an English actor and singer. He is best known for his work as principal comedian in the Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas, which he performed and recorded with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and other troupes.After army service in World War I,...
. In 1938, many company members participated in the Technicolor film of The Mikado produced and conducted by Geoffrey Toye.
On 3 September 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, the British government ordered the immediate and indefinite closure of all theatres. Carte cancelled the autumn tour and disbanded the company. Theatres were permitted to reopen from 9 September, but it took some weeks to re-form the company. Some performers, including Martyn Green, were already committed elsewhere, and Grahame Clifford
Grahame Clifford
For the film editor with a similar name, see Graeme Clifford.Grahame Clifford , was an English opera singer and actor primarily known for his work in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and as principal baritone of the Royal Opera Company, Covent Garden.-Life...
was engaged to play his roles. The company resumed touring, in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, on Christmas Day 1939. The company continued to perform throughout the war, both on tour and in London, but in 1940 German bombing destroyed the sets and costumes for five of its shows: Cox and Box, The Sorcerer
The Sorcerer
The Sorcerer is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Arthur Sullivan. It was the British duo's third operatic collaboration. The plot of The Sorcerer is based on a Christmas story, An Elixir of Love, that Gilbert wrote for The Graphic magazine in 1876...
, H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...
, Princess Ida
Princess Ida
Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was their eighth operatic collaboration of fourteen. Princess Ida opened at the Savoy Theatre on January 5, 1884, for a run of 246 performances...
and Ruddigore. The old productions of Pinafore and Cox and Box were recreated shortly after the war, and Ruddigore received a new production, planned by Carte but not seen until after his death. The other two operas took longer to rejoin the company's repertory. On the other hand, for the first wartime season, Peter Goffin
Peter Goffin
Peter Goffin F.R.S.A. , was an English set and costume designer and stage manager, known for his work with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.-Biography:...
, a protégé of Carte's daughter, Bridget, had designed a new production of The Yeomen of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard; or, The Merryman and His Maid, is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 3 October 1888, and ran for 423 performances...
first seen in January 1940, and his new Ruddigore
Ruddigore
Ruddigore; or, The Witch's Curse, originally called Ruddygore, is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy Operas and the tenth of fourteen comic operas written together by Gilbert and Sullivan...
debuted in 1948. A return to the U.S. in 1947 was very successful, and the company resumed frequent visits to America.
Bridget D'Oyly Carte
Dame Bridget Cicely D'Oyly Carte, DBE , was the granddaughter of impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte and the only daughter of Rupert D'Oyly Carte...
. She soon hired Frederic Lloyd
Frederic Lloyd
Frederic Lloyd, OBE , was an English theatre manager. Most notably, Lloyd was the General Manager of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1951 until its closure in 1982.-Biography:...
as general manager. Bridget and Lloyd also took steps to keep the productions fresh, engaging designers to redesign the costumes and scenery. Peter Goffin, who had redesigned Yeomen (1939) and Ruddigore (1948) for the company, created new settings and costumes for Bridget for half a dozen more productions: The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...
(1952; settings only, most of the celebrated Charles Ricketts
Charles Ricketts
Charles de Sousy Ricketts was a versatile English artist, illustrator, author and printer, and is best known for his work as book designer and typographer from 1896 to 1904 with the Vale Press, and his work in the theatre as a set and costume designer.-Life and career:Ricketts was born in Geneva...
costumes being retained), Patience
Patience (opera)
Patience; or, Bunthorne's Bride, is a comic opera in two acts with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. First performed at the Opera Comique, London, on 23 April 1881, it moved to the 1,292-seat Savoy Theatre on 10 October 1881, where it was the first theatrical production in the...
(1957), The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers
The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for a very successful 554 performances , closing on 30 June 1891...
(1958), Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its...
(1959), H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...
(1961; ladies' costumes) and Iolanthe
Iolanthe
Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh collaboration of the fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan....
(1961). A new production of Princess Ida
Princess Ida
Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was their eighth operatic collaboration of fourteen. Princess Ida opened at the Savoy Theatre on January 5, 1884, for a run of 246 performances...
in 1954 was designed by James Wade. In 1957, Goffin designed a unit set for the company to facilitate touring, reducing the number of vans required to carry the scenery from twenty to nine. A 1957 review of Yeomen in The Times praised the production and marvelled at "the continued vitality of the Savoy operas", noting: "The opera remains enchanting; the singing seems, on the whole, better and more musical than that which one used to hear, say, 30 years since; and though the acting lacks some of the richly crusted performances of those days, it is perhaps none the worse for that". In 1949, the company began a new series of recordings with Decca, featuring Green, who had returned to the company after the war, and continued the series with his successor, Peter Pratt
Peter Pratt
Peter Pratt was an English actor and singer who is best remembered for his comic roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas....
. The company cooperated with the production of the 1953 film The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan
The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan
The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan is a 1953 British technicolor film that dramatises the story of the collaboration between W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. Gilbert and Sullivan authored 14 comic operas, later referred to as the Savoy Operas, which became the most popular series of musical...
, which used some former members of the company in the cast. In 1955, the company gave a seven-month tour to the U.S. to celebrate the 75th anniversary of its first American productions. In 1959, the company began the tradition of holding a zany "last night" on the last evening of each London season.
With the approaching end of the D'Oyly Carte monopoly on Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
performances, when the copyright on Gilbert's words expired in 1961 (Sullivan’s music had already come out of copyright at the end of 1950), Bridget D'Oyly Carte contributed the company and all its assets to an independent charitable trust. She endowed the trust with the company's scenery, costumes, band parts and other assets, together with a cash endowment, and supervised the production of operas on behalf of the trust until economic necessity forced the closure of the company in 1982. As it turned out, competing professional productions of Gilbert and Sullivan did not harm the company. Beginning in 1960, the company re-recorded all of the operas with Pratt's successor, John Reed
John Reed (actor)
John Lamb Reed, OBE was an English actor, dancer and singer, known for his nimble performances in the principal comic roles of the Savoy Operas, particularly with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company...
, and also recorded a number of other Sullivan pieces. It made a cinema film of The Mikado in 1966, and recorded for television broadcast its productions of Patience (1965) and H.M.S. Pinafore (1973). It also supplied the soundtrack for a cartoon film of Ruddigore (1967). During the 1960s, the company gave five North American tours. A new stage director, Michael Heyland
Michael Heyland
Michael Heyland is a retired stage director and actor, and an arts and events consultant in England. He was Director of Productions of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1969–78. Later, he was an arts and events consultant for many organizations and managed the Royal Choral Society for sixteen...
, was hired in 1969, staying until 1978.
In March and April 1975, after the regular London season at Sadler's Wells, the company moved to the Savoy Theatre for a fortnight's centennial performances, beginning on 25 March, the 100th anniversary of the first performance of Trial by Jury. All thirteen surviving Gilbert and Sullivan operas were performed in chronological order. Trial by Jury was given four times, as a curtain raiser to The Sorcerer, Pinafore and Pirates and as an afterpiece following The Grand Duke. Before the first of the four performances of Trial, a specially written curtain raiser by William Douglas-Home
William Douglas-Home
William Douglas Home was court-martialled in World War II for his refusal to obey orders as a British army officer and later became a successful British dramatist.-Early life:...
, called Dramatic Licence, was played by Peter Pratt as Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era...
, Kenneth Sandford
Kenneth Sandford
Kenneth Sandford was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in baritone roles of the Savoy Operas of Gilbert and Sullivan....
as Gilbert and John Ayldon
John Ayldon
John Ayldon is an English opera singer, best known for his performances in bass-baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.-Life and career:...
as Sullivan, in which Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte plan the birth of Trial in 1875; afterwards, the prime minister, Harold Wilson
Harold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, FSS, PC was a British Labour Member of Parliament, Leader of the Labour Party. He was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, winning four general elections, including a minority government after the...
, and Bridget D'Oyly Carte each gave a short speech. A highlight of the season was a new staging of Utopia Limited (later given again at the Royal Festival Hall
Royal Festival Hall
The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,900-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge. It is a Grade I listed building - the first post-war building to become so protected...
), its first revival by the company. The Grand Duke was given as a concert performance, with narration by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
presenter Richard Baker
Richard Baker (broadcaster)
Richard Baker OBE is a British broadcaster best known as a newsreader for the BBC News from 1954 to 1982. He was a contemporary of Kenneth Kendall and Robert Dougall and was the first person to read the BBC Television News in 1954. At one time he lived in Barnet, North London...
. Royston Nash
Royston Nash
Royston Hulbert Nash is an English-born conductor, best known as a music director of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, who is now living in the U.S.-Life and career:...
, who was at the company's musical helm from 1971 to 1979, conducted most of the performances, with Isidore Godfrey
Isidore Godfrey
Isidore Godfrey was musical director of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for 39 years, from 1929 to 1968...
(Pinafore) and Sir Charles Mackerras
Charles Mackerras
Sir Alan Charles Maclaurin Mackerras, AC, CH, CBE was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan...
(Pirates and Mikado) as guest conductors. Princes Philip and Andrew saw The Gondoliers. In the final performance of Trial by Jury, the regular D'Oyly Carte chorus was augmented by fourteen former stars of the company: Sylvia Cecil
Sylvia Cecil
Sylvia Cecil was an English singer and actress. She began her career in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. She soon moved on to musical comedy, including the musicals of Ivor Novello and Noël Coward, as well as variety and radio. Her career spanned at least...
, Elsie Griffin
Elsie Griffin
Elsie Griffin was an English opera singer, best known for her performances in the soprano roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company....
, Ivan Menzies
Ivan Menzies
J. Ivan "Jimmy" Menzies was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in the comic baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in Britain in the 1920s and the J. C. Williamson Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company in Australia the 1930s and 1940s.Menzies...
, John Dean
John Dean (singer)
John Dean was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in the tenor roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.-Life and career:...
, Radley Flynn, Elizabeth Nickell-Lean, Ella Halman
Ella Halman
Ella Louise Halman was an English opera singer, best known for her performances in the contralto roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. She married another D'Oyly Carte performer, L. Radley Flynn, in 1940.-Life and career:Halman was born in Ealing, Middlesex...
, Leonard Osborn
Leonard Osborn
Leonard Osborn was an English opera singer, best known for his portrayal of the tenor roles in the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. An accomplished actor and dancer, he later became a stage director for the company.-Life and career:Leonard Alfred George Osborn was born in...
, Cynthia Morey, Jeffrey Skitch
Jeffrey Skitch
Jeffrey Ralph Skitch is a retired teacher, actor and operatic baritone best known for his performances and recordings with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1952 to 1965....
, Alan Barrett, Mary Sansom, Philip Potter
Philip Potter
Philip Potter is a retired English singer and actor, best known for his performances in the tenor roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.-Early life and career:Philip White Potter was born in Leicester...
and Gillian Humphreys.
In 1977, during Queen Elizabeth II's Jubilee Year, the company gave a Royal Command Performance
Royal Command Performance
For the annual Royal Variety Performance performed in Britain for the benefit of the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund, see Royal Variety Performance...
of Pinafore at Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it...
. The company visited Denmark in 1970, Rome in 1974, and gave its last American tours in 1976 and 1978. Its last tour, in Australasia
Australasia
Australasia is a region of Oceania comprising Australia, New Zealand, the island of New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term was coined by Charles de Brosses in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes...
, conducted by the company's new musical director, Fraser Goulding, was a success in 1979. Throughout the 20th century, until 1982, the company toured, on average, for 35 weeks per year (in addition to its 13-week London seasons), fostering a "strong family atmosphere, reinforced by the number of marriages in the company and the fact that so many people stayed with it for so long." Principal soprano Valerie Masterson
Valerie Masterson
Margaret Valerie Masterson , is a retired English opera singer, a lecturer and Vice-President of British Youth Opera. After study in Italy, she began to sing opera in Europe...
married the company's principal flautist, Andrew March. She explained, "people didn't have flats or houses ... touring was your life." Throughout its history, the company maintained strict moral standards, and it was sometimes referred to as the "Savoy boarding school", enforcing policies regarding behaviour on and off stage, and even a dress code. Soprano Cynthia Morey ascribed the strong affection that artists had for the company to "the unique family atmosphere engendered by the company's direct descent from its creators, Gilbert, Sullivan ... Richard D'Oyly Carte, followed by his widow, Helen, his son Rupert, and finally his granddaughter Bridget." The company also preserved, for over a century, what The Times called a "unique performance style, which may be summarised as a combination of good taste and good fun".
Closing and brief revival of the company
Arts Council of Great Britain
The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. The Arts Council of Great Britain was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England , the Scottish Arts Council, and the Arts Council of Wales...
's Music Panel and Touring Committee recommended that the Arts Council make a grant to the company, but this idea was rejected. The company's fans made an effort to raise private funds, but these were insufficient to make up the accelerating losses. In 1981, producer George Walker proposed to film the company performing all of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas but backed out. Bridget D'Oyly Carte was forced to close the company in 1982, after a final London season in which John Reed and Valerie Masterson
Valerie Masterson
Margaret Valerie Masterson , is a retired English opera singer, a lecturer and Vice-President of British Youth Opera. After study in Italy, she began to sing opera in Europe...
returned as guest artists. It gave its last performance on 27 February 1982, at the Adelphi Theatre
Adelphi Theatre
The Adelphi Theatre is a 1500-seat West End theatre, located on the Strand in the City of Westminster. The present building is the fourth on the site. The theatre has specialised in comedy and musical theatre, and today it is a receiving house for a variety of productions, including many musicals...
. A three-LP recording of this performance was released, which included songs from all of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. The company had operated nearly continuously for 107 years since the opening of Trial by Jury in 1875. Even after it closed, however, the company's productions continued to influence the productions of other companies.
Dame Bridget D’Oyly Carte died in 1985, leaving in her will a £1 million legacy to enable the company to be revived. The company secured sponsorship from Sir Michael Bishop
Michael Bishop (businessman)
Michael David Bishop, Baron Glendonbrook CBE is a British businessman and life peer who rose to prominence as owner of the airline BMI. He sold his stake in the airline to Lufthansa on 1 July 2009 and has an estimated personal fortune of £480 million...
, who later became chairman of the board of trustees, the Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
City Council and BMI
Bmi (airline)
British Midland Airways Limited , is an airline based at Donington Hall in Castle Donington in the United Kingdom, close to East Midlands Airport, and a fully owned subsidiary of Lufthansa...
British Midland Airways (of which Bishop is chairman). Richard Condon
Richard Condon (impresario)
Richard Condon , was an impresario and theatre manager.Condon, affectionately known as Dick was made theatre manager of the Theatre Royal, Norwich in 1972. During his tenure, the genial Irishman transformed the theatre into one of the most popular in Europe...
was appointed the revived company's first general manager, and Bramwell Tovey
Bramwell Tovey
Bramwell Tovey, OM is an English-born Grammy Award winning conductor and composer. His musical roots are in The Salvation Army. He was educated at Ilford County High School, the Royal Academy of Music and the University of London. His formal music education was as a pianist and composer...
was its first musical director. In succeeding seasons, the company's productions of The Mikado and H.M.S. Pinafore were nominated for Olivier Awards. From 1988 to 2003, the company mounted productions of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas on tour and in London, and it produced several operettas by Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
, Lehár
Franz Lehár
Franz Lehár was an Austrian-Hungarian composer. He is mainly known for his operettas of which the most successful and best known is The Merry Widow .-Biography:...
and Strauss
Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...
. Unlike the original company, which had regularly performed up to a dozen operas each year, 48 weeks a year, the new company generally presented only one or two operas in shorter seasons. In the first season, in 1988, the operas played were Iolanthe and The Yeomen of the Guard, both starring Gillian Knight
Gillian Knight
Gillian Knight is an English singer and actress, known for her performances in the contralto roles of the Savoy Operas. After six years starring in these roles with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, beginning in 1959, Knight began a grand opera career.Knight joined Sadler's Wells Opera in 1968...
. The company made its debut at the Sunderland Empire Theatre on 29 April 1988, and, after touring, opened in London at the Cambridge Theatre
Cambridge Theatre
The Cambridge Theatre is a West End theatre, on a corner site in Earlham Street facing Seven Dials, in the London Borough of Camden, built in 1929-30. It was designed by Wimperis, Simpson and Guthrie; interior partly by Serge Chermayeff, with interior bronze friezes by sculptor Anthony Gibbons...
in July. The press notices were good, particularly about the musical aspects of the new company; opinion was divided about the staging. The Observer thought the productions "miles superior to the later work of the old D'Oyly Carte; better designed, better lit ... better played and better sung." A review in The Guardian praised the musical standards, but added, "Gilbert and Sullivan is as much theatrical as musical entertainment and there remains a lot to be done on the visual side."
The two operas presented in 1989 were The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance. The new company's first three productions were broadly traditional in their staging. The Pirates, however, marked a break with traditional presentations, with the setting a giant toy-box and a collapsible toy boat. In 1990 the company presented campier versions of Pinafore and Trial (including a heavily pregnant Angelina) that were much criticised by the old company's fans, who complained that it was a betrayal of the legacy left by Bridget D'Oyly Carte. The next season departed further from earnest presentations in its production of The Gondoliers, which included a deeply corrugated stage floor, "startling", "surreal, primary coloured, starkly angled sets", gimmicky distracting business and generally staging that was considered "way over the top". It "was unveiled to storms of outraged booing". Most of the critics shared the public's disapproval of the production. The Times wrote, "The satiric point disappears in meretricious ado and humourless humour". Some critics, however, thought that it was time to sweep away "bad and lazy" traditions of the old company, calling the production "riotous, zany and subversive ... with a Goonish
The Goon Show
The Goon Show was a British radio comedy programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960, with occasional repeats on the BBC Light Programme...
or Pythonesque
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Monty Python’s Flying Circus is a BBC TV sketch comedy series. The shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines...
sense of slapstick comedy", noting that "The girls are pretty and the boys are handsome, and they sing and dance with a youthful freshness". Also in 1991, the company accepted an offer from the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, to make its base there, although its pattern of spring national tours and summer London seasons was not affected.
Another initiative was to stage a foreign operetta for the first time since Richard D'Oyly Carte's day, in what would be D'Oyly Carte's first co-production. The work chosen was Orpheus in the Underworld
Orpheus in the Underworld
Orphée aux enfers is an opéra bouffon , or opéra féerie in its revised version, by Jacques Offenbach. The French text was written by Ludovic Halévy and later revised by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux....
, which Opera North
Opera North
Opera North is an English opera company based in Leeds. The company's home theatre is the Leeds Grand Theatre, but it also presents regular seasons in several other cities, at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, the Lowry Centre, Salford Quays and the Theatre Royal, Newcastle...
presented in 1992 and D'Oyly Carte toured in 1993 as part of its 35-week tour celebrating the 150th anniversary of Sullivan's birth. The innovation was welcomed, receiving an Arts Council Grant, and the company later presented Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...
(1994), La vie parisienne
La vie parisienne
La vie parisienne is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, composed by Jacques Offenbach, with a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy.This work was Offenbach's first full-length piece to portray contemporary Parisian life, unlike his earlier period pieces and mythological subjects...
(1995) and The Count of Luxembourg
The Count of Luxembourg
The Count of Luxembourg is an operetta in two acts with English lyrics and libretto by Basil Hood and Adrian Ross, music by Franz Lehár, based loosely on the German original, entitled "Der Graf von Luxemburg", which had premiered in Vienna in 1909....
(1997). Of the Savoy operas, the new company never staged The Sorcerer, Patience, Princess Ida, Ruddigore, Utopia and The Grand Duke, stating that they lacked box-office potential.
Unlike its predecessor, the new company was not a permanent ensemble with a recognisable style. Some performers appeared in several productions, but each production was cast anew, often with guest stars from British television in leading roles, with varying degrees of success. The chorus and orchestra of the new company were much smaller than those of the old company: the chorus was reduced from 32 (or more) to 20, and the orchestra from 38 generally to 24. For a 1998 production of Pirates at the Queen's Theatre
Queen's Theatre
The Queen's Theatre is a West End theatre located in Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. It opened on 8 October 1907 as a twin to the neighbouring Gielgud Theatre which opened ten months earlier. Both theatres were designed by W.G.R...
, the orchestra was even smaller: The Guardian wrote, "The goings-on in the pit are dispiriting. Budgetary constraints have forced the company to re-write the score for a band of nine instrumentalists. They play well enough, but every one of Sullivan's parodies loses its clout." The company received a modest Arts Council grant in 1997 to keep it afloat and turned to private funding from Raymond Gubbay
Raymond Gubbay
Raymond Gubbay is a classical music promoter and impresario based in London. The programme to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his starting out as a promoter says that, after arranging small scale concerts around the UK, he began gradually to promote in London...
for London seasons beginning in 1998. Despite the lean forces, the company received generally favourable reviews over the next five years under the management of Ian Martin. Although the new company's productions met with mixed reviews, some of its recordings have been well received. Many of these recordings also restore music that had been cut by Gilbert and Sullivan or the company over the years. Gubbay felt over-committed by 2003 and pulled out. After fifteen years, with no Arts Council funding forthcoming, the company suspended productions in May 2003.
Principal performers
Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its...
in 1875, the unknown George Grossmith
George Grossmith
George Grossmith was an English comedian, writer, composer, actor, and singer. His performing career spanned more than four decades...
was recruited in 1877. Before Grossmith left the company in 1889, he created the principal comic roles in nine of the operas, and so the principal comedian parts in the operas are often referred to as the "Grossmith" roles. Other performers who created a long series of roles in the original productions of the operas included baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
Rutland Barrington
Rutland Barrington
Rutland Barrington was an English singer, actor, comedian, and Edwardian musical comedy star. Best remembered for originating the lyric baritone roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas from 1877 to 1896, his performing career spanned more than four decades...
, mezzo-soprano
Mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
Jessie Bond
Jessie Bond
Jessie Bond was an English singer and actress best known for creating the mezzo-soprano soubrette roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. She spent twenty years on the stage, the bulk of them with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.Musical from an early age, Bond began a concert singing...
, soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
Leonora Braham
Leonora Braham
Leonora Braham , born Leonora Lucy Abraham, was an English opera singer and actress primarily known as the creator of principal soprano roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas....
, contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
Rosina Brandram
Rosina Brandram
Rosina Brandram was an English opera singer and actress primarily known for creating many of the contralto roles in the Savoy operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company....
, tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
Durward Lely
Durward Lely
Durward Lely was a Scottish opera singer primarily known as the creator of five tenor roles in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas, including Nanki-Poo in The Mikado....
and bass-baritone
Bass-baritone
A bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing three Wagnerian roles: the Dutchman in Der fliegende...
Richard Temple. In the original New York City productions and British touring productions, soprano Geraldine Ulmar
Geraldine Ulmar
Geraldine Ulmar was an American singer and actress, best known for her performances in soprano roles of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.-Life and career:...
, baritone Signor Brocolini
Signor Brocolini
John Clark, better known as Signor Brocolini , was an Irish-born American operatic singer remembered for creating the role of the Pirate King in the original New York City production of The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan, in 1879-80...
, comic George Thorne
George Thorne
George Thorne, was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in the comic baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, especially on tour and in the original New York City productions...
and bass-baritone Fred Billington
Fred Billington
Fred Billington was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company...
became particularly well known.
After Grossmith left the company, the most notable players of his roles during the rest of Gilbert's lifetime were Walter Passmore
Walter Passmore
Walter Henry Passmore was an English singer and actor best known as the first successor to George Grossmith in the comic baritone roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company....
(principal comedian from 1894 to 1903) and Charles H. Workman
Charles H. Workman
Charles H. Workman was a singer and actor best known as a successor to George Grossmith in the comic baritone roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operas. He was sometimes credited as C. Herbert Workman or C. H...
, who played the roles on tour with the company from 1897 and took over as principal comedian at the Savoy between 1906 and 1909. Both of these performers made recordings of songs from the Savoy operas. During the Passmore era, principal players of the company included Brandram and Barrington, as well as tenor Robert Evett
Robert Evett
Robert Evett was an English singer, actor, theatre manager and producer.-Acting career:In 1892 Evett joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company on tour in The Vicar of Bray, playing the Reverend Henry Sandford, the tenor lead. In 1893, Evett added the role of Oswald in Haddon Hall...
, soprano Isabel Jay
Isabel Jay
Isabel Jay was an English opera singer and actress, best known for her performances in soprano roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and in musical comedies...
, sopranos Ruth Vincent
Ruth Vincent
Ruth Vincent was an English opera singer and actress, best remembered for her performances in soprano roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in the 1890s and her roles in the West End during the first decade of the 20th century, particularly her role as Sophia in Tom...
and Florence St. John
Florence St. John
Florence St. John , was an English singer and actress of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras famous for her roles in operetta, musical burlesque, music hall, opera and, later, comic plays.-Life and career:...
, tenor Courtice Pounds
Courtice Pounds
Charles Courtice Pounds , better known by the stage name Courtice Pounds, was an English singer and actor known for his performances in the tenor roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and his later roles in Shakespeare plays and Edwardian musical comedies.As a young member...
and his sister, mezzo-soprano Louie Pounds
Louie Pounds
Louisa Emma Amelia "Louie" Pounds was an English singer and actress, known for her performances in musical comedies and in mezzo-soprano roles with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company....
. During Workman's tenure, principal players included contralto Louie René
Louie René
Louie René was an English singer and actress best remembered for her performances with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in the Gilbert and Sullivan contralto roles at the turn of the 20th century....
, soprano Clara Dow
Clara Dow
Clara Millington Dow was an English operatic soprano of the early twentieth century. After a concert career, she appeared at the Savoy Theatre in the first repertory seasons of Gilbert and Sullivan operas mounted by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in 1906-09, under the direction of the author...
, Leo Sheffield
Leo Sheffield
Leo Sheffield was an English singer and actor best known for his performances in baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company....
, and a young Henry Lytton
Henry Lytton
Sir Henry Lytton was an English actor and singer who was the leading exponent of the comic patter-baritone roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operas in the early part of the twentieth century...
. No complete recordings of the operas were made that included active members of the Company until the 1920s. Workman and W. S. Gilbert quarrelled over their production of Fallen Fairies
Fallen Fairies
Fallen Fairies; or, The Wicked World, is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Edward German. Premiering at London's Savoy Theatre on December 15, 1909, it failed miserably, closing after just 50 performances...
in 1909, and Gilbert banned Workman from appearing in his works in Britain. It is likely that, otherwise, Workman would have continued as principal comedian of the company. Indeed, Rupert D'Oyly Carte
Rupert D'Oyly Carte
Rupert D'Oyly Carte was an English hotelier, theatre owner and impresario, best known as proprietor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and Savoy Hotel from 1913 to 1948....
wrote to Workman in 1919 asking him to return to the company as principal comedian, but Workman declined.
From 1909 to 1934, the principal comedian was Henry Lytton, who had been playing a variety of roles with the company steadily since 1887. He received a knighthood for his performances during his long tenure with the company. Lytton's voice deteriorated during his later career, and when HMV embarked on a series of complete recordings of the operas after World War I, Lytton was not invited to record most of his roles. Instead, the concert singer George Baker
George Baker (record singer)
George Baker was an English singer. He is remembered for singing on thousands of gramophone records in a career that spanned 53 years, beginning in 1909...
was brought in to substitute. Other performers from this period include mezzo-soprano Nellie Briercliffe
Nellie Briercliffe
Nellie Briercliffe was an English singer and actress best known for her performances in the mezzo-soprano roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company....
, bass-baritone Darrell Fancourt
Darrell Fancourt
Darrell Fancourt was an English bass-baritone, known for his performances and recordings of the Savoy Operas....
, whose is estimated to have portrayed the Mikado of Japan more than 3,000 times, contralto Bertha Lewis
Bertha Lewis
Bertha Lewis was an English opera singer and actress primarily known for her work as principal contralto in the Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.-Early life and career:...
, tenor Derek Oldham
Derek Oldham
Derek Oldham was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in the tenor roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company....
, soprano Elsie Griffin
Elsie Griffin
Elsie Griffin was an English opera singer, best known for her performances in the soprano roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company....
and baritones Leo Sheffield and Sydney Granville
Sydney Granville
Sydney Granville was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company....
.
Martyn Green
William Martyn-Green , better known as Martyn Green, was an English actor and singer. He is best known for his work as principal comedian in the Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas, which he performed and recorded with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and other troupes.After army service in World War I,...
, who played the principal comic parts until 1951, except for a gap from the end of 1939 to 1946, when Grahame Clifford
Grahame Clifford
For the film editor with a similar name, see Graeme Clifford.Grahame Clifford , was an English opera singer and actor primarily known for his work in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and as principal baritone of the Royal Opera Company, Covent Garden.-Life...
replaced him. Green's time with the company is remembered for the early Decca recordings of the operas. During Green's tenure, in addition to the long-serving Fancourt, principal players included baritone Richard Walker
Richard Walker (singer)
Richard Walker, was an English opera singer and actor, best known for his performances in the baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Between 1932 and 1939 Walker was married to D'Oyly Carte chorister Ena Martin...
, soprano Helen Roberts
Helen Roberts
Helen Florence Roberts , later known by her married name, Betty Walker, was an English singer and actress, best known for her performances in soprano roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company....
, mezzo-soprano Marjorie Eyre
Marjorie Eyre
Marjorie Eyre was an English opera singer, best known for her performances in the soprano and mezzo-soprano roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company...
, baritone Leslie Rands
Leslie Rands
Leslie Rands was an English opera singer, best known for his performances in baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. He married D'Oyly Carte soprano Marjorie Eyre in 1926.-Life and career:...
and contralto Ella Halman
Ella Halman
Ella Louise Halman was an English opera singer, best known for her performances in the contralto roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. She married another D'Oyly Carte performer, L. Radley Flynn, in 1940.-Life and career:Halman was born in Ealing, Middlesex...
. Green was followed by Peter Pratt
Peter Pratt
Peter Pratt was an English actor and singer who is best remembered for his comic roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas....
. He left the company in 1959, after more than eight years as principal comedian, still only 36 years old. During Pratt's years, principals included bass-baritone Donald Adams
Donald Adams
Charles Donald Adams was an English opera singer and actor, best known for his performances in bass-baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and his own company, Gilbert and Sullivan for All.Adams began his career with the BBC Repertory Company in 1944...
, tenor Leonard Osborn
Leonard Osborn
Leonard Osborn was an English opera singer, best known for his portrayal of the tenor roles in the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. An accomplished actor and dancer, he later became a stage director for the company.-Life and career:Leonard Alfred George Osborn was born in...
(who later directed the productions), contralto Ann Drummond-Grant
Ann Drummond-Grant
Ann Drummond-Grant was a British singer and actress, best known for her performances in contralto roles of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.Drummond-Grant began her career as a soprano...
and mezzo-soprano Joyce Wright
Joyce Wright
Joyce Wright is an English singer and actress, best known for her performances in the mezzo-soprano roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. She was married for a time to another D'Oyly Carte performer, Peter Pratt....
.
Pratt's successor was John Reed
John Reed (actor)
John Lamb Reed, OBE was an English actor, dancer and singer, known for his nimble performances in the principal comic roles of the Savoy Operas, particularly with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company...
, who served as principal comedian for two decades. Other stars from this era were Thomas Round
Thomas Round
Thomas Round is a retired English opera singer and actor, best known for his performances in the tenor roles of the Savoy Operas and in grand opera....
, Donald Adams
Donald Adams
Charles Donald Adams was an English opera singer and actor, best known for his performances in bass-baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and his own company, Gilbert and Sullivan for All.Adams began his career with the BBC Repertory Company in 1944...
, Gillian Knight
Gillian Knight
Gillian Knight is an English singer and actress, known for her performances in the contralto roles of the Savoy Operas. After six years starring in these roles with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, beginning in 1959, Knight began a grand opera career.Knight joined Sadler's Wells Opera in 1968...
, Valerie Masterson
Valerie Masterson
Margaret Valerie Masterson , is a retired English opera singer, a lecturer and Vice-President of British Youth Opera. After study in Italy, she began to sing opera in Europe...
and Kenneth Sandford
Kenneth Sandford
Kenneth Sandford was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in baritone roles of the Savoy Operas of Gilbert and Sullivan....
, all of whom, except the last, left the company for the wider operatic stage of Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, Sadler's Wells
Sadler's Wells Theatre
Sadler's Wells Theatre is a performing arts venue located in Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell in the London Borough of Islington. The present day theatre is the sixth on the site since 1683. It consists of two performance spaces: a 1,500 seat main auditorium and the Lilian Baylis Studio, with extensive...
, English National Opera
English National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...
, Aix-en-Provence
Aix-en-Provence Festival
The festival international d'art lyrique is an annual international music festival which takes place each summer in Aix-en-Provence, principally in the month of July. Devoted mainly to opera, it also includes concerts of orchestral, chamber, vocal and solo instrumental music.-Establishment:The...
and elsewhere. When Reed left the company in 1979, his understudy James Conroy-Ward
James Conroy-Ward
James Conroy-Ward is a music publisher and retired English actor and singer best known for performing the Gilbert and Sullivan principal comic roles with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.-Biography:...
took over until the closure of the company in 1982.
From 1988, the revived company used guest artists for each production. The most regularly seen principal comedians were Eric Roberts and Richard Suart
Richard Suart
Richard Suart is an English opera singer and actor, who has specialised in the comic roles of Gilbert and Sullivan operas and in operetta, as well as in avant-garde modern operas...
, both of whom regularly perform the "Grossmith" roles for other opera companies. Others have included Sam Kelly
Sam Kelly
Sam Kelly is an English actor who has appeared in television, radio and theatre.-Career:He has had roles in British sitcoms such as Porridge as Bunny Warren, Allo 'Allo! as Captain Hans Geering leaving after series three, On the Up as Dennis Waterman's chauffeur and We'll Think of Something as Les...
, Jasper Carrott
Jasper Carrott
Jasper Carrott OBE is a British comedian, actor, television presenter and personality.-Early life:...
and Simon Butteriss.