G & S Trivia
Welcome to the Gilbert & Sullivan Trivia page! The lives, and the colourful and strongly contrasting personalities, of William Schwenck Gilbert and Arthur Seymour Sullivan are as interesting as their works; so here is a selection (to be added to at regular intervals) of snippets of information about the operas and the men who produced them. If you are moved to do some further exploring on your own, the best place to start is the massive internet Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, to be found at http://math.boisestate.edu/GaS/ , and the many excellent Wikipedia articles on the individual operas and the performers who sang in them, as well as the creators and their associates. A useful
bibliography can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_and_Sullivan#References. Note, by the way, that many frequently-recounted stories of Gilbert and/or Sullivan belong to tradition rather than history!
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.60.
An atypical Gilbert and Sullivan work is an oratorio entitled The Martyr of Antioch, written for the Leeds Festival, of which Sullivan was the principal conductor, in 1880. The libretto was derived from a poetic drama by Henry Hart Milman, which Gilbert had trimmed, re-arranged and in parts re-written: in commemoration, Sullivan presented him with an engraved silver cup. The Martyr was a popular success, but several critics considered that Sullivan’s music was inappropriately bright and charming for the story of St Margaret of Antioch, a heroic fourth-century Christian martyr.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 59.
Sullivan received a knighthood in 1884. At a dinner which he held to celebrate, the guests were treated to selections from Iolanthe sung by the Savoy cast in the theatre and transmitted to his house by telephone. Gilbert’s knighthood came much later, in 1907: coincidentally, a revival of Iolanthe was running at the time. He was indignant at being identified in the official list as a “playwright” instead of “dramatist”, saying in a interview “We never hear of novel-wrights, or poem-wrights, or essay-wrights; why then of play-wrights?”; but noted with satisfaction that it was the first time anyone had been knighted for writing for the stage.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 58.
By far the least successful opera during the original sequence of Gilbert and Sullivan’s productions was their last joint work, The Grand Duke, which had a continuous run of only 123 performances. Previously, the shortest runs had been those of Utopia Limited (245), Princess Ida (246) and Ruddigore (288). Many critics and G’n’S enthusiasts consider The Grand Duke to be a much better work, both in itself and in comparison to the others, than those figures suggest; but at the time its failure was the death-blow to the partnership.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 57.
The threat by the Queen in Iolanthe to end “The cherished rights you enjoy on Friday nights” is a reference to the fact that Friday was “short sitting day” in Parliament, business ending at 6 p.m. to enable members to return to their constituencies. When the opera was first performed short sitting day was Wednesday, and the line was changed from “Wednesday nights” to “Friday nights” in 1902 in response to a change in the practice.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 56.
Though Sullivan is often thought of as a quintessentially English composer, he was not English by parentage: his father was Irish and his mother Italian. Gilbert for his part was one-quarter Scottish on his mother’s side: a photograph exists, from a short period in which he served in the Royal Aberdeenshire Militia, of him impressively arrayed in kilt, plaid and sporran.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 55.
Only one Gilbert and Sullivan character has the distinction of appearing in two operas. In Utopia Limited, a company of six Englishmen, each representing some aspect of imperial Britain, arrive in the South Sea island of Utopia to assist the King in modernising his realm; and the last to appear is Captain Corcoran from H.M.S. Pinafore, with his catchphrase “What, never?” – “No, never!” – “What, never?” – “Well, hardly ever!” The fact that he has evidently regained his Captaincy after losing it at the end of the earlier opera, and earned a knighthood into the bargain (he is listed in the dramatis personae as “Captain Sir Edward Corcoran, K.C.B.”), is not explained.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 54.
Gilbert and Sullivan had little contact in the last years of Sullivan’s life, but in late 1900 when the composer was suffering from what proved to be his terminal illness, Gilbert wrote him a letter saying that he would have liked to visit him but had been very ill himself, and was on the point of going abroad to recuperate: “I sincerely hope to find you all right again on my return, and the new opera [The Emerald Isle] running merrily.” Sullivan died before Gilbert’s return; but his nephew assured Gilbert that he had been pleased to receive the letter.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 53.
Iolanthe is unusual in that neither of the two romantic leads has an extended self-contained solo, but Gilbert originally wrote a full-scale song for each of them. On the first night, Strephon had a song beginning “Fold your flapping wings, soaring legislature!” which was cut after being adversely criticised as too pointed in its socio-political content. A song for Phyllis, beginning “My love for him is dead”, was planned to precede her second-act scene with the two Earls; but Gilbert decided against using it and it was dropped before the opening.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 52.
In 1886, during the run of The Mikado, Sullivan produced a cantata entitled The Golden Legend, to a libretto based on a poem by Longfellow. This was well received, and certainly contains some of Sullivan’s finest choral writing. Ethel Smyth, who was later to earn a reputation as a composer, wrote in her memoirs that Sullivan, presenting her with a copy of the score, said “I think this is the best thing I’ve done, don’t you?” – and was visibly disappointed when she replied that she thought his masterpiece was The Mikado.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 51.
The notebooks in which Gilbert recorded the development of his ideas for Iolanthe show that his original intention was to have the fairies in confrontation with a chorus of lawyers; and that he later considered making them politicians, with the male principals including members of the Cabinet such as the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary. It may well have been the need for a more striking visual effect than those would have afforded that led him to change this plan, making the decision written in the notebook as “They MUST be peers”.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.50.
On the opening night of Iolanthe, the Fairy Queen and the three principal fairies wore headdresses each containing a small electric light bulb, powered by a battery (that is, a sealed glass jar containing two metal plates suspended in sulphuric acid) concealed in the costume. These were switched on at a given moment during the finale: a spectacular effect in those days when electric lighting was itself a novelty.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.49.
One of Gilbert’s interests in later life was a menagerie of pets: not only cats and dogs but pigeons, turkeys, parrots, a donkey called Adelina, a tame deer, monkeys and a family of ring-tailed lemurs, of which one, called Paul, had a trick (which Gilbert was fond of displaying to guests) of hopping from one of his shoulders to the other as he donned and doffed his jacket with great rapidity.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.48.
In 1896 during a late summer vacation in Lucerne, Sullivan made a proposal of marriage to a much younger lady named Violet Beddington. Sullivan was 54 but already in seriously failing health; and (according to the lady, who was 20 at the time, in an interview given many years later) said that he was asking her to give him only two years of her life, after which he would be dead. (In fact he lived for five more years.) His proposal was declined, and Miss Beddington eventually married a novelist, Stephen Hudson, who brought the relationship between her and Sullivan in fictionalised form into one of his books.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.47.
During the rehearsal period of Iolanthe, in order to prevent speculation in the press or attempts at plagiarism, the name used for the title character was “Perola”, the entire company being under the impression that this was in fact to be her name. To accommodate the four-note setting of “Iolanthe”, which occurs as a miniature leitmotif throughout the opera, chorus and principals sang “Come, Perola” or “Ah, Perola”. A few days before the opening, the company members were understandably disconcerted on being instructed to sing a different name. Sullivan’s comment was “Use any name that happens to occur to you! Nobody in the audience will be any the wiser, except Mr Gilbert – and he won’t be there!”
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.46.
Though Bunthorne in Patience traditionally wears a costume reminiscent of Oscar Wilde, his flamboyant personality and inflated literary style suggest a caricature of another representative of the aesthetic movement, the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne. Swinburne and George Grossmith, who played Bunthorne in the original run, were both small and somewhat plain-featured men; prompting Gilbert to write, for Patience addressing Bunthorne, the lines “For you are hideous, undersized, And everything that I’ve despised!” Those lines were cut before the first performance.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.45.
Princess Ida, uniquely among the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, is a re-write of a play which Gilbert had written fourteen years earlier: this was called The Princess, and was a parody (Gilbert called it a “respectful perversion”) of Tennyson’s poem of the same name. The blank-verse dialogue of the play was retained for the opera; and its unusual three-act structure (short first and third acts framing a long second one) is explained by the fact that the second, third and fourth of the play’s original five acts were combined as the second act of the opera.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.44.
In 1880 Henry Irving, one of the most renowned actors and theatre managers of the Victorian era, produced a play called Iolanthe, an adaptation of King René’s Daughter by the Danish dramatist Henrik Hertz. D’Oyly Carte, at Gilbert’s request, applied to Irving for permission to re-use the name in the opera. Apart from the name (which means “purple flower” and actually should be pronounced “YO-lanthe”), the play and the opera are wholly unrelated; Tchaikovsky’s opera Iolanta, however, is based on the Danish play.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.43.
Captain Shaw, mentioned in the Fairy Queen’s song, is Sir Eyre Massey Shaw, a former military officer from Ireland who became superintendent of the London Fire Brigade in 1861 and held the post till 1891. During his term of office the size and efficiency of the fire brigade was greatly increased. Gilbert sent him a complimentary ticket in the centre of the stalls for the first night of Iolanthe, and the Fairy Queen, knowing where he was seated, faced him directly while singing her lines “Oh, Captain Shaw…”. Shaw had not expected this, but reportedly he responded by standing up and taking a bow.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.42.
The original Fairy Queen, Alice Barnett, was nearly six foot tall and proportionally well-built: a fact which is pointedly referred to in her line “I see no objection to stoutness, in moderation” and the references to her curling up inside a buttercup, swinging upon a cobweb, etc. She also created Lady Jane in Patience, who describes herself as “Not pretty – massive”. The fact that she was much taller than George Grossmith, who played Bunthorne and the Lord Chancellor, added to the effectiveness of their comic interplay in both operas.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.41.
Stage fairies were a very popular feature of the Victorian theatre, not only in pantomime, extravaganza and burlesque but in non-musical plays in which fairies and humans interacted, usually (but not always) with comic effect. Besides Iolanthe, Gilbert used fairies in several plays: one of the cleverest and most original is Foggerty’s Fairy, which presents the complications that result when a fairy grants a man the opportunity of undoing one event in his past.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.40.
In the Bab Ballad “The Rival Curates”, the gentle clergyman Mr Clayton Hooper is furious at hearing of an even gentler clergyman, and sends his sexton and his beadle to bump him off if he does not agree to become less saintly: an idea which appears in a new guise in Bunthorne’s confrontation with Grosvenor in Patience. The critic G.K. Chesterton commented that Gilbert mistook his own art here: a fiery poet infuriated at being upstaged by a mild poet is certainly funny, but has not the inspired lunacy of a mild curate infuriated at being upstaged by a still milder curate.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.39.
The original Katisha was Rosina Brandram, one of the longest serving members of the Savoy company. Her first appearance was in The Sorcerer in 1877, in which she understudied the part of Lady Sangazure; and she created the principal contralto roles in every opera from Princess Ida (1884) to The Grand Duke (1896) and subsequently in Sullivan’s post-Gilbert operas and others staged at the Savoy including those by Edward German. In 1906, the year before she died, Gilbert in a speech referred to her “glorious voice” and stated that though most of her parts had been elderly ladies, she “could never succeed in looking more than an attractive eight-and-twenty – it was her only failure.”
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.38.
Gilbert’s “Bab Ballads”, a series of comic poems written for the magazine Fun, contain many ideas which he later re-used in the operas. A verse in the ballad “King Borriah Bungalee Boo” lists the subjects of this “man-eating African swell”:
There was haughty Pish-Tush-Pooh-Bah,
There was lumbering Doodle-Dum-Deh,
Despairing Alack-a-Day-Ah,
And good little Tootle-Tum-Teh:
Exemplary Tootle-Tum-Teh.“Pish-Tush-Pooh-Bah” was split to provide names for two characters in The Mikado.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.37.
In 1907 the Lord Chamberlain banned all performances of The Mikado in view of a state visit by the Japanese Prince Fushimi, a move which prompted widespread ridicule. Helen D’Oyly Carte, who had been running the Savoy company since her husband’s death in 1901, staged a single performance which was attended by a Japanese newspaper correspondent. He wrote: “I had a pleasant evening, and I consider that the English people, in withdrawing this play lest Japan should be offended, are crediting my country with needless readiness to take offence.” Gilbert’s response to the ban was: “In three years we shall probably be at war with Japan about India, and they will offer me a high price to permit The Mikado to be played.”
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.36.
The parts of Pooh-Bah and Pitti-Sing (i.e. “pretty thing”) were created by two of the stalwarts of the Savoy company, Rutland Barrington and Jessie Bond. In the revival of The Sorcerer which immediately preeded The Mikado they had established an excellent stage rapport as Constance and Dr Daly (in previous operas their characters had never been required to interact to any extent); and in their second-act scenes in The Mikado their comic interplay was so effective that Gilbert later wrote to Jessie: “Barrington without you is flint without steel”. In the next opera, Ruddigore, they were partners in the plot as Sir Despard and Mad Margaret.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 35.
The dénouement of The Pirates of Penzance, in which the defeated pirates are saved by the revelation that they are “all noblemen who have gone wrong”, is a send-up of the stock situation in melodrama where a seemingly low-born character turns out to be the heir to a title or fortune. In the original production, the finale included the exchange: “Oh spare them, they are all noblemen who have gone wrong!” – “What, all noblemen?” – “Yes, all noblemen!” – “What, all?” – “Well, nearly all!”: a humorous reminiscence of the catchphrase “What, never?” – “No, never!” – “What, never?” – “Well, hardly ever!” from the previous opera, H.M.S. Pinafore.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 34.
Gilbert’s last opera, Fallen Fairies, was set to music by Edward German, who had completed the score of The Emerald Isle, on which Sullivan had been working when he died, and proceeded to write two more operas with its librettist Basil Hood, Hood and German deliberately presenting themselves as the successors to Gilbert and Sullivan. Fallen Fairies was a box-office flop, partly because it was a re-hash of a play which Gilbert had written in 1873 and was hopelessly old-fashioned in 1909; and German, disappointed at this and exhausted by Gilbert’s quarrel with C.H. Workman into which he had been reluctantly drawn, never wrote again for the stage.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 33.
Some years after Sullivan’s death, Gilbert planned to produce revised versions of some of his least successful operas: Princess Ida, His Excellency (a non-Sullivan opera), Ruddigore, Utopia Limited and The Grand Duke. In the case of the last three, his planned alterations would “probably be very material”. Unfortunately, a venomous quarrel with C.H. Workman, a former G&S player who had leased the Savoy Theatre, caused him to drop the project, and the revisions were never made: what they would have been is an intriguing question.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 32.
Both Gilbert and Sullivan were connoisseurs of fine cigars, and Sullivan would chain-smoke cigarettes while composing or writing. In 1891, when both partners were tentatively seeking a reconciliation after a dispute (the famous “carpet quarrel”) which had led to two years of estrangement, Gilbert in a letter to Sullivan referred to the “cloud” that had hung over them, and Sullivan replied “We can dispel the clouds hanging over us by setting up a counter-irritant in the form of a cloud of smoke.”
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 31.
In the original production of The Mikado, Ko-Ko (played by George Grossmith) carried an authentic Japanese sword, part of Gilbert’s own collection of Japanese curios. While being interviewed for a newspaper, Gilbert demonstrated this sword to the reporter, and claimed that it was this that had given him the idea of including an executioner among the opera’s characters.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.30.
At the time of The Mikado, the rapidity and success with which Japan was transforming itself into a modern industrial state had led to a widespread popular interest in Japanese culture and a fashionable craze for collecting Japanese artefacts: Bunthorne’s line in Patience “I do not long for all one sees / That’s Japanese” is a sarcastic comment on this vogue. While the opera was being rehearsed, an elaborate Japanese exhibition opened at Knightsbridge, traditional arts and crafts being demonstrated by native Japanese in replica Japanese settings; and Gilbert hired members of this exhibition to teach Japanese movements and gestures to his cast.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.29
During the final dress rehearsal of The Mikado, Gilbert shocked the cast by announcing that he had decided to drop the Mikado’s song “My object all sublime…”. He was persuaded to change his mind by a deputation of the entire company which greeted him the next day as he arrived to supervise the preparations for the opening performance.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.28
Yum-Yum’s mysterious line “And for yam I should get toko” was explained in a D’Oyly Carte glossary as meaning “Instead of something nice I should get something nasty”, but the reference is much more specific. “Toko for yam” was a familiar Victorian slang expression for punishment, derived from British colonial rule in the West Indies. “Toko” is a word for a beating borrowed from Hindi, and yam (sweet potato) was given as the staple food to native servants. A servant who displeased his master was liable to get a thrashing and be put on a starvation diet – that is, for yam he would get toko.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.27
Gilbert was fascinated by the idea of a magic lozenge or potion which would transform those who took it into whatever they were pretending to be, and repeatedly tried to persuade Sullivan to accept this as the basis for an opera. Sullivan never agreed to this, and eventually Gilbert used the idea in an opera (The Mountebanks) set to music by Alfred Cellier. This opera contains what is surely the craziest notion in all Gilbert’s works: the effect of the potion on two of the characters is to change them into life-size clockwork models of Hamlet and Ophelia!
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.26
Sullivan’s father died in 1866, his brother Fred (who had created the part of the Judge in Trial by Jury) in 1877, and his mother in 1882, the year of Iolanthe. As a tribute to his father he wrote a dignified orchestral overture entitled In Memoriam; his famous song “The Lost Chord” was likewise a memorial to his brother; and it has been conjectured that the sad song “He loves!” is his musical tribute to his mother.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.25
The “Sir Garnet” mentioned in the Colonel’s first song in Patience is Field Marshal Sir Garnet Wolseley, K.P., G.C.B., O.M., G.C.M.G., V.D., P.C., an Irish officer who served with outstanding distinction in the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the Second Opium War in China, and numerous other campaigns. His “thrashing a cannibal” is a reference to his success in the Zulu War. He wrote an autobiographical memoir and works of military history, and had a reputation for smartness and efficiency. He is affectionately caricatured as Major-General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance: “the very model of a modern Major-General”.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.24
Bunthorne: “Do you ever yearn?” Patience: “I earn my living.” This looks like a very poor pun, but it is much better than it appears: the process of causing milk to curdle by warming it with rennet, the first stage in making cheese, is called yearning or yirning — something which the dairymaid Patience would do regularly in the course of earning her living.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.23
Sullivan’s first dramatic work for the stage was Cox and Box, an exuberant farce for three characters (its original designation was “a musical triumviretta”: the third character is Sergeant Bouncer, a shady landlord who gets double rent for a room by letting it to both Cox, who works all day, and Box, who works all night). The librettist was Francis Burnand, editor of the humorous magazine Punch and a prolific writer of farces and burlesques. Gilbert, who was not yet personally acquainted with Sullivan, stated in a review of Cox and Box that the music was much better than the libretto deserved.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.22
In his relations with women, the happily-married Gilbert was blameless: throughout his life he enjoyed flirting with young women, but his conduct never, even by strait-laced Victorian standards, gave rise to any hint of scandal. Sullivan never married but had a long-term mistress, a divorced American socialite (and accomplished singer and musician) named Fanny Ronalds. To his nephew Herbert, whose legal guardian he became after his brother’s death, he invariably referred to Mrs Ronalds as “Auntie”, even when Herbert had become an adult.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.21
The Yeomen of the Guard is the only Gilbert and Sullivan opera with a sad ending: the jester Jack Point loses his beloved Elsie to his rival Colonel Fairfax, and according to the stage direction “falls insensible at their feet”. George Grossmith, who created the part, suggested by his comic acting that this fall was not to be taken seriously; but Henry Lytton, playing the part with D’Oyly Carte’s touring company, made it starkly clear that the jester fell dead of a broken heart. Gilbert, surprisingly for such a decisive man, never stated firmly which interpretation was correct; and the ambiguity has provided performers with scope for individual interpretations ever since.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.20
Sullivan’s parents were a devoted couple, but Gilbert’s bluff, quick-tempered father and cold, aloof mother were painfully incompatible, and eventually parted company. Gilbert’s sympathies were entirely with his father, whom he much resembled: after the break-up he never spoke to his mother again, and his last letter to her is a short and formal note headed “Madam” (Sullivan’s letters to his mother were headed “Dearest Mum”).
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.19
The plot of The Sorcerer hinges on a love potion which the characters unknowingly imbibe while carousing at a feast. In the original production (in 1877), the first act ended with the company feeling the effects of the potion but continuing to carouse, and at the opening of the second act the magic had already taken effect, the chorus entering in ill-matched couples. The familiar (and much more effective) version, in which Act I ends with the company falling unconscious and Act II opens with them recovering and falling in love, was an alteration made by Gilbert for a revival in 1884.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.18
Gilbert’s libretti are uniformly free from the faintest hint of smut or suggestiveness —with just one or two exceptions. One of the nearest things in the operas to an off-colour joke, and one which is so subtle as usually to pass notice, is Bunthorne’s poem with its references to calomel, colocynth and aloe, all of which are used medicinally as laxatives, and Lady Angela’s innocent comment “How purely fragrant!”
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.17
The libretto of Patience contains numerous specific allusions to near-contemporary poetry in the “aesthetic” mode which the opera satirises. Lady Jane’s “Fools — fools and blind!” recalls a line from Swinburne: “Ye fools of fate: Ye fools and blind!”; and Bunthorne’s final lines “I shall have to be contented / With a tulip or lily” (rhyming with “die”) parodies the poem “Love-Lily” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which ends “Between the hands, between the brows, / Between the lips of Love-Lily”.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.16
Lieutenant the Duke of Dunstable is the only lead tenor part in the G&S canon without a self-contained solo number, but Gilbert originally wrote one for him: a cynical song proclaiming that men of rank can behave in ways that would not be tolerated in members of the lower orders: “Scandal hides her head abashed, Brought face to face with Rank and Money!” Sullivan’s setting is lost except for an accompaniment, but the melodic line has been conjecturally reconstructed and the number is now sometimes included in performances.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.15
Sir Joseph Porter in H.M.S. Pinafore, who sings of how he became “the ruler of the Queen’s Navee” in spite of having no experience whatever of the sea or ships, is a lampoon on William Henry Smith, founder of the bookshop chain W.H. Smith’s, who had been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in the year before Pinafore opened. The allusion was instantly recognised, and the Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, was heard to refer to the First Lord as “Pinafore Smith”.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.14
The Yeomen of the Guard is the only opera which opens with a solo number: the curtain rises to reveal Phoebe, the Sergeant’s daughter, sitting alone on the stage. Jessie Bond (who created the part) relates in her memoirs that on the opening night, as she was awaiting the start of the show, a frantic Gilbert kept “fussing about” – “Oh Jessie, are you sure you’re all right?” - until she exclaimed “For Heaven’s sake, Mr Gilbert, go away and leave me alone, or I shan’t be able to sing a note!”
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.13
In H.M.S. Pinafore, the Captain reacts to his daughter’s attempted elopement with a member of the crew by exclaiming “Damme, it’s too bad!”; and the chorus repeat in horror “He said Damme! He said Damme!” When D’Oyly Carte staged a production of Pinafore played by children, Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, protested in anguish: “I cannot find words to convey to the reader the pain I felt in seeing those dear children taught to utter such words to amuse ears grown callous to their ghastly meaning…. How Mr. Gilbert could have stooped to write, or Sir Arthur Sullivan could have prostituted his noble art to set to music, such vile trash, it passes my skill to understand.” In fact, for the children’s production Gilbert had replaced “Damme” by “Hang it”.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.12
While on a trip to Paris in 1862, Sullivan was introduced to Rossini, who had long since retired from composing operas and whose main interest was now food. The seventy-year-old and the twenty-year-old composers got on well, conversing in French and playing duets together, and before leaving Paris Sullivan received from Rossini a signed photograph inscribed “Offert à mon jeune collègue Arthur Sullivan”. Sullivan later claimed (in an interview in the Strand Magazine) that it was Rossini who had inspired him with a love of opera and the stage.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.11
The chorus “Miya Sama, Miya Sama” in Act II of The Mikado is an adaptation for Western voices and instruments of an authentic imperial Japanese war song. The words mean: “Honourable Prince, what is the thing fluttering in front of your Highness’s horse?” (The last line “Toko tonyare tonyare na” is an onomatope for the sound of trumpets and drums, like Gilbert’s “Tantantara tzing boom!”) The answer to the question, given in another verse, is “It is the Imperial banner of silken brocade, the signal for the punishment of rebels”. The line used elsewhere in the opera “O ni! Bikkuri shakkuri to!” is meaningless, though the actual words are Japanese: o, ni and to have various meanings, but no permutation makes more sense than “Oh two! Surprise hiccup door!”
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.10
Queen Victoria once said to Sullivan, “You ought to write a grand opera, Sir Arthur: you would do it so well.” Eventually he did: it was entitled Ivanhoe, with a libretto based on Scott’s novel by Julian Sturgis. Gilbert and Sullivan were on bad terms when Ivanhoe was produced, and Gilbert declined Sullivan’s conciliatory offer of a pair of tickets for the opening night; but he eventually went to see it himself, and commented; “I expected to be bored, and I was not. That is the highest compliment I have ever paid a grand opera.” Queen Victoria never saw it.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.9
Gilbert at the age of 30 married Lucy Agnes Turner, daughter of an army officer, who was 19 (such an age difference was entirely normal in Victorian society). Though childless, the marriage was to all appearances stable and happy: Gilbert was a notoriously short-tempered and pugnacious character, but Lucy, whom he addressed affectionately as “Kitten” or “Kitty”, provided an oasis of harmony throughout his life.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.8
The first collaboration of Gilbert and Sullivan was Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old: not an opera but a lightweight burlesque for the Christmas season at the Gaiety Theatre. The score was never published and most of the music is lost, except for one song which was printed separately, some recently-discovered ballet music and the chorus “Climbing over rocky mountain”, later used in The Pirates of Penzance. Both Gilbert and Sullivan already had established reputations, and it is unlikely that either of them saw Thespis as the start of a long-term partnership.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.7
One of Sullivan’s earliest songs was composed when he was a seventeen-year-old student at Leipzig Conservatory: a lively setting of a poem called “Ich möchte hinaus es jauchzen” (“I want to cry out with gladness…”) by the Swiss poet August Corrodi (whose other works include translations of a selection of songs and poems by Burns into Swiss German). He dedicated it to a young lady named Rosamund Barnett, one of two daughters of an English composer who were also studying in Leipzig.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.6
The part of John Wellington Wells, the Sorcerer in the opera of that name, was originally played by George Grossmith, a music-hall singer and comedian with no operatic experience, who went on to create the comic roles (Sir Joseph, the Lord Chancellor, Ko-Ko, etc.) in many of the later operas. Initially surprised at being offered the part, he said to Gilbert, “For the part of a magician, I should have thought you required a fine man with a fine voice.” Gilbert replied, “No, that is just what we don’t want.”
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No.5
An over-effusive woman at a party once remarked to Gilbert that she found Sullivan’s music really too delightful: it reminded her of “dear Bach” (pronouncing it “Baytch”). “Do tell me,” she asked Gilbert, “What is dear “Baytch” doing now? Is he still composing?” (Bach died in 1750.) “No, Madam,” Gilbert replied, “I believe dear “Baytch” is now de-composing.”
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 4
The scene with the ghostly ancestral portraits in Act II of Ruddigore is generally considered one of the highlights of the entire G&S series; but Gilbert himself disliked it: he maintained that he had wanted the scene to be treated humorously, and that Sullivan’s dramatic music was “like introducing fifty lines of Paradise Lost into a farcical comedy”. He always remained touchy on this issue, and Sullivan made a pointed rejoinder by bequeathing the autograph score of Ruddigore to Gilbert in his will.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 3
Patience was the sixth collaborative stage work by Gilbert and Sullivan. It opened on April 23, 1881, and had a run of 578 performances: longer than any previous G&S (the longest till then had been that of H.M.S. Pinafore, with 571) and later excelled only by The Mikado with 672. Only one show had had a longer run in the history of the London musical theatre, Planquette’s operetta Les Cloches de Corneville with 705.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 2
Patience is, strictly speaking, the first Savoy Opera: it was transferred in the course of its run from the Opéra Comique theatre to the newly-built Savoy. The Savoy was the first theatre in London to have electric lighting, though gas lamps were installed as a failsafe. Two months after its opening, when the electric system was fully operational, Richard D’Oyly Carte demonstrated the safety of the new technology by wrapping an illuminated bulb in a handkerchief, breaking it with a hammer and displaying the unscorched cloth.
Gilbert and Sullivan Trivia No. 1
The costume traditionally worn by Bunthorne, one of the poets in Patience, is a copy of Oscar Wilde’s famous outfit: floppy hat, big bow tie, velvet jacket and knee breeches, buckled shoes. The opera is a satire of the “aesthetic” movement in late-Victorian art and literature, in which Wilde was a central figure. To prepare American audiences for Patience, D’Oyly Carte persuaded Wilde to go on a lecture tour of the States, paying his expenses.
Derrick McClure, who contributes the Trivia section, retired in 2009 after nearly forty years of lecturing in the English Department, during which he published four books and over a hundred articles on Scottish literary and linguistic topics. A Gilbert and Sullivan addict since he heard his first opera at the age of eight, he has sung in all but one (Utopia Limited) of the surviving thirteen G&S operas, his most recent being the University of Aberdeen Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s concert performance of H.M.S. Pinafore in October 2011. He was awarded an MBE in 2002 for services to Scottish culture.
