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Gilbert and Sullivan's operas are some of the world's best-loved musical works, delighting audiences with their joyous wit, topsy-turvy logic and extravagant wordplay. This glorious treasury is the definitive annotated edition of all fourteen of their operas.From the partially lost work Thespis, the first collaboration between W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, through the triumphant comic romps The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado, to lesser-performed gems such as the fanciful The show more Sorcerer and the acerbic lampoon Patience, Gilbert's libretti are collected here in their most accurate and faithful form. There is a fascinating commentary on each work, telling the extraordinary stories behind the inspiration for the opera and its performance history, and giving plot summaries and original cast lists.
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It's difficult to review this volume since, after 100 years, there are so many versions of it in print. Suffice it to say, you can find cheap paperback copies of this - just be sure it includes all of the works from Trial by Jury to The Grand Duke. There may be some with footnotes but a lot of the additions simply provide the straightforward text, leaving an understanding of the thousands of little Victorian references to your own imagination. (Ian Bradley's annotated G&s, in its 2016 anniversary edition, is the best source for this.)
Of course without Sullivan's music, these inevitably feel less than complete, but Savoyards love to memorise the intricacies of Gilbert's jewel-box writing, so here you go!
Of course without Sullivan's music, these inevitably feel less than complete, but Savoyards love to memorise the intricacies of Gilbert's jewel-box writing, so here you go!
9.78088E 12
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340+ Works 4,665 Members
Born in London, William S. Gilbert served a term as a government clerk and was called to the bar as a barrister before being diverted into the bohemian world of Victorian comic journalism. He first achieved popularity as the author of several volumes of "Bab Ballads" (Max Beerbohm praised them as "silly"). Moving on to theater, Gilbert contributed show more to the current rage for travesties of opera and for one-act musical "entertainments" until a blank-verse burlesque of Tennyson's Princess Princess led to commissions and full-length comedies, both mythological and "modern." Still highly regarded by critics, some of these---perhaps Sweethearts (1874) and Engaged (1877)---should be investigated by today's readers and producers. As it is, their best memorial is the early work of George Bernard Shaw, who, although he polemically rejected their cynicism, was clearly influenced by Gilbert's comedies and their inversion of social values. By the time of Engaged, however, a second dramatic career had overtaken Gilbert. Collaboration with the composer Arthur Sullivan, begun in 1871 (Thespis), achieved theatrical success with Trial by Jury in 1875. In the comic operas that followed, Sullivan's generally allusive music enriched the sometimes shrill pessimism of Gilbert's wit. An unlikely jostle of theatrical parody, contemporary satire, intricate meters, and logical fantasy, the librettos have often been compared with the comedies of Aristophanes and have influenced English playwrights from Oscar Wilde to Tom Stoppard. Uncomfortable, often acrimonious, the partnership nevertheless lasted through 25 years and 13 Savoy operas (so called because many were staged by Richard D'Oyly Carte at his Savoy Theatre). Gilbert, whose merely theatrical connections (as opposed to Sullivan's serious musical credentials) held him back from formal honors, was knighted in 1907, only a few years before his death. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
32+ Works 842 Members
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