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William Gilbert – Arthur Sullivan – Richard D'Oyly Carte

Beginning in the 1870s, playwright William S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan revolutionized the musical theatre, creating witty, melodic operettas that set a new standard for stage professionalism. Their scores sparkled with melody and clever rhyme, and Gilbert's librettos blended silliness and satire in settings that ranged from pure fantasy to the utterly realistic. Innovative producer Richard D'Oyly Carte publicized these shows as "light operas", but by any name, they were musicals – some of the finest the world would ever see.

Beginnings
Gilbert had been an unsuccessful attorney before his illustrated comic poems appeared in several popular magazines. This opened the way to a successful career as a playwright and director. Sullivan was Britain's most promising serious composer, but he was quite willing to compose lighter pieces to cover the expenses of the high-society lifestyle he craved. Both men had contributed to minor musical shows, but neither expected that musical theatre would be their key to lasting fame.

In the 1860s, the British musical theatre consisted of variety shows, French operettas, and the slapdash comic light operas presented by John Hollingshead at his Gaiety Theatre. Hollingshead hired Gilbert and Sullivan to create Thespis (1871 - 63), a mythological spoof involving a theatrical troupe that stumbles onto Mount Olympus and trades places with the aging Greek gods. Written and staged in a frantic five weeks, Gilbert himself later dismissed the show as "crude and ineffective," but it impressed at least one audience member – aspiring producer Richard D'Oyly Carte. Four years later, he needed a one-act "curtain raiser" to share the bill with his production of Offenbach's La Perichole at London's Opera Comique. Carte convinced G&S to adapt one of Gilbert's satirical poems.

Trial By Jury: The Curtain Raiser
The opening night of Trial By Jury as recreated for The Gilbert and Sullivan Story.

The resulting thirty five minute musical eclipsed La Perichole and became the talk of London. Trial By Jury (1875 - 131) was a delicious spoof of a breach of promise trial, a now-forgotten procedure where a man could be sued for withdrawing a proposal of marriage. In the show, the defendant is a roguish playboy, the pretty plaintiff (wearing her wedding dress) flirts shamelessly with the all-male jury, and the amoral judge resolves things by marrying the girl himself. This piece established several comic themes that would run through most of Gilbert and Sullivan's shows –

• unqualified men who have oiled their way into high public office
• the course of true love flows in surprising directions
• an appalling disdain for women over 40 years of age

For example, Trial's "Learned Judge" (originally portrayed by Sullivan's brother Frederic) sings of the questionable tactics that brought him to his exalted position --

At Westminster Hall
I danced a dance,
Like a semi-despondent fury;
For I thought I never
Should hit on a chance
Of addressing a British Jury.
But I soon got tired
Of third-class journeys,
And dinners of bread and water;
So I fell in love
With a rich attorney's
Elderly, ugly daughter.

The rich attorney,
He jumped with joy,
And replied to my fond professions:
"You shall reap the rewards
Of your pluck, my boy,
At the Bailey and
Middlesex sessions.
"You'll soon get used
To her looks," said he,
"And a very nice girl
You will find her!
She may very well pass
For forty-three
In the dusk,
With a light behind her!"

Both Gilbert and Sullivan looked on operettas as a sideline, but they realized it could prove very profitable. D'Oyly Carte persuaded them to attempt a full-length work.

The Sorcerer
George Grossmith, who originated most of the G&S comic "patter" roles – seen here as John Wellington Wells in The Sorcerer.

The Sorcerer (1877 - 178) involved a magician who wreaks havoc in a small English village with a love potion – a plot device Gilbert would suggest often in years to come. The Sorcerer lampooned Victorian notions of social propriety and class distinction, but it was so polished, witty and utterly respectable that no one took offense. It had a healthy run, and unauthorized productions soon appeared in the United States, which at that time did not recognize international copyrights.

Gilbert and Sullivan were initiating a form of British operetta that was quite unlike its continental predecessors. The sexual references and situations found in French operetta were avoided. Where French operettas had cartoonish characters, G&S made a conscious effort to use more familiar, believable characters. Most of the characters in The Sorcerer were the sort of people British audiences knew from everyday life -- with the obvious exception of the slightly bizarre title character.

Encouraged by The Sorcerer's profitable run, the authors next wrote an operetta that had even greater fun with British social conventions. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, creating a show that would reshape the popular musical theatre on both sides of the Atlantic.

Next: G&S Story II - "Pinafore-mania!"