J. C. Trewin

IN the Savoy Opera Patience, W. S. Gilbert urged any eager æsthete to:

I feel sometimes that to be eloquent in praise of Savoy Opera is to puzzle certain modern playgoers who did not come to Gilbert-and-Sullivan in youth. Many of them would like to know the secret of the Savoy; but they have been brought up with their ears tuned to a different musical idiom, other forms of nonsense. What is it, they ponder anxiously (for this is an age of pondering), that has helped the Savoy Operas to survive? The "very dull old days... have long since passed away ". Yet here are a dozen light operas of the Victorian 'eighties and 'nineties, that till hold the allegiance of many thousands of people and pack the theatres either in London or the provinces whenever they are played. Why is this? Why are the operas that were so wildly applauded Then equally popular Now?

A Savoyard who rises to answer this challenge finds himself at once in a dilemma. Ibsen used to say that earnest inquirers found in his work various "significances" that had never entered his mind. Gilbert too, would be perplexed I think at any determined probing into his sense of humour. Basically, the Savoy Operas were designed as light entertainment for the West of London — Arnold Bennett was right , in effect, when he called them "the first musical comedies — and they live mainly because of the quality of their music (which does so admirably all that it sets out to do) and the peculiar "bite" of their Gilbertian humour.

In its heart the British public has always loved the more fantastic brands of nonsense, from Lewis Carroll to Nathaniel Gubbins and Timothy Shy. A friend for whom I have respect speaks in the same breath the humour of "Itma" and the humour of Gilbert. True, in each there is the same topsy-turvy, head-over-heels quality, the same cheerful gibing at established institutions, though Gilbert's humour is, if one may say so, much more Gilbertian than the rougher and swifter "Itma" revels. The main point of resemblance is the constant and diverting use of what Gilbert called "ingenious paradox".

Really, playgoers unused to the Savoy convention and maybe a little suspicious of anything late Victorian, need not be puzzled at the enduring triumphs of The Gondoliers and Iolanthe. Anything that is good of its kind has a chance of survival. In their own class — that of the trim, taut, formally-designed comical-satirical musical play — the Gilbert-and-Sullivan operas are consummate, and they have duly survived. I am not sure that many of our modern musical plays — which have the same ingredients except Gilbert's special brand of satire — are likely to last for half the time. And none of the musical plays from Gilbert's own world still holds the theatre. Offenbach's music? Ah yes, but who wrote Offenbach's libretti? There, perhaps, I come to the core of any attempt to say why the operas are as effective Now as Then. They present the perfect marriage of composer and librettist — a union that is a great rarity. Sullivan's music in its lilt and buoyancy and the sparkle on it like sun upon a stream is indeed the champagne of light opera. But does it stand alone? Notice that whenever the Gilbert-and-Sullivan selections are played on pier or in bandstand — and let the avant-garde mourn this if it will — some in the audience will be soundlessly mouthing the words. Gilbert's lyrics are joined as inextricably to the music as the music to the text. Read the collected lyrics alone and you may not be altogether happy. You will find that automatically you set them to music as you read.

Partnership then, first of all. That is why we speak of the authors always as one entity, as Gillbert-and-Sullivan; mark the hyphens. Just now I mentioned Arnold Bennett. Here is the passage from his Journal of 1929 that I met the other day: "The only difference between, say, The Gondoliers and any modern musical comedy is that the former is in every way better than the latter." Most of the audience at Sadler's Wells recently for the revived Ruddigore would have echoed this. But for the probing, analysing minds of to-day we are to find more definite reasons. Look then closer at these "triumphs of the old Savoy". For one thing the texts date very little. We have it is true Patience and its topical joke at the expense of æstheticism (Nonsense? Yes, perhaps. But oh, what precious nonsense!). There are a few mildly esoteric references to such people and things as Paddington Pollaky, "Monday Pops", and Captain Shaw. But on the whole the texts run very smoothly indeed and can often bear a curiously modern application.
Take the Sentry's song in Iolanthe:

Forgetting the storm it raised in 1928 (sic), Gilbert and Sullivan fans of today accept the production of The Mikado, designed by Charles Ricketts, as traditional. Above, we compare the old look with the new: on the left Henry Lytton (Koko) appears with Bertha Lewis (Katisha): and right with Dorothy Gill in the later Ricketts costumes and setting.

Broadly correct still, if one moves the little Liberal further towards the Left. Then Gilbert presents, in H.M.S. Pinafore, that sound example to the politician: Sir Joseph Porter's

with its obvious result

There is the picture of democracy in The Gondoliers where the two Kings of Barataria learn that

And The Gondoliers also offers the lilt: The Chancellor in his peruke — The Earl, the Marquis, and the Dook — The Groom, the Butler, and the Cook — They all shall equal be. In The Mikado we have a word to That Nisi Prius nuisance, who just now is rather rife,   The Judicial Humorist — I've got him on the list. In Ruddigore we hear the enlightening dialogue between the new Baron (sic) and the ghosts in the Picture Gallery: Robin: On Tuesday I made a false income-tax return All: Ha! Ha! First Ghost: That's nothing! Second Ghost: Nothing at all! Third Ghost: Everybody does that. Fourth Ghost: It's expected of you. And so it goes on. Listen to the song of the Joint Stock Company from the lesser-known Utopia, Ltd.: Though a Rothschild you may be In your own capacity, As a Company you've come to utter sorrow — But the liquidators say, "Never mind — you needn't pay," So you start another Company to-morrow!

Nanki-poo as he first appeared in The Mikado; and above Charles Rickett's design for the revised production.

And to this, from Iolanthe, (the Lord Chancellor remembering his youth):

Or to this, from The Mikado:

And we have the bellicose cry of the New Woman in Princess Ida:

The operas have added to the language such words as "Gilbertian" for an ingeniously paradoxical situation, "Pooh-Bah" for a functionary with manifold offices, and so on. Lines from the libretti are part of daily speech. And yet Fashion tells us to let the operas lie in lavender on a top shelf. At the same time it has a queer habit of reproving new librettists and composers by warning them that they are not in the Gilbert-and-Sullivan class. Fashion can't have it both ways. The whole situation is, shall we say, Gilbertian.

Personally I saw most of the operas for the first time when I was twelve. Since then I have never lost any chance for a debauch. At the age of twelve I was also a fervid admirer of Rider Haggard and Anthony Hope, a collector of stamps and a Datas in the matter of remembering cricket averages. All of these enthusiasms except that for Gilbert-and-Sullivan withered long ago: but the Savoy Operas remain so firmly fixed in mind that to this day — and although it is eight years since the revivals have been staged there — I cannot pass the Savoy Theatre off the Strand without thinking instinctively of Gilbert-and-Sullivan, some shred or patch from one or other of the operas.

The last time I had a chance to hear G.-and-S. at the Savoy itself was in the first weeks of 1933 when Sir Henry Lytton, most famous of Savoyard comedians appeared for the last time, playing Koko in the first act of The Mikado. Lytton had the virtues of the best Gilbert-and-Sullivan man. That is to say, he never overplayed his hand. He kept scrupulously to the rules and within them was a model of dexterity and neatness; there have been few neater comedians in our theatre. What he

		Left: Jack Point. Martyn Green in the early costume and Graham Clifford (with book) in the new dress. Below: The small inset provided for Phœbe's opening song.

lacked (in common I fear with most of the Savoyards) was any flare of comic inspiration. Your great comedians can transform a part without adding a syllable to the text. Correctness, loyalty to the author; these qualities are admirable But we want sometimes in a Savoy revival to feel the special magic, the warmth, of a great clown's personality; and this alas we never do. Instead there are occasional misguided efforts to improve on the author, to add slyly to the text. And only the Mikado himself would have known the punishment to fit this particular crime.

Ruddigore: Three conceptions of Mad Margaret. Above, W.S. Gilbert's own original sketch of the character and a later interpretation by Percy Anderson. Below, Peter Goffin's design for the new production which opened the D'Oyly Carte's London season at Sadler's Wells in the summer of 1949.

I do not want to see the style of the productions changed. The formalities of Gilbert-and-Sullivan are part of the abiding charm. All I do ask — with so many other devotees of the Savoy — is for more zest and spirit in the professional performances. For me the lord of Gilbert-and-Sullivan playing has always been Darrell Fancourt, a member of the D'Oyly Carte company for nearly thirty years in such heavy baritone parts as The Pirate King, Sir Roderic Murgatroyd, the Mikado, Dick Deadeye, Mountararat and Colonel Calverley. Fancourt is both a fine singer and, within the Savoy convention, a fine and zestful actor with the gift of a dominating personality. Roderic's song "When the night wind howls ", as Fancourt sings it in the second act of Ruddigore, is at the meridian of that opera and one of the glories of Gilbert-and-Sullivan in the contemporary theatre.

I have mentioned Ruddigore; or, The Witch's Curse two or three times in this article. It has been restored only lately to the D'Oyly Carte list. Its scenery — with the exception of the first act set of Rederring in Cornwall — and its costumes were destroyed during the war; and its return has been a major D'Oyly Carte event. I am all in favour of preserving the texts of the operas — preserving them jealously — but I have never seen why the original decor should be sacrosanct as well. Some of it was never very good, and that is why it is a delight to have the refurbished productions that, one by one, are entering the repertory. Peter Goffin, who designed the new Yeomen and who has now done Ruddigore, brings to his work a sense of logic that the acutely logical Gilbert himself would have admired. In Ruddigore he refuses to agree that the chorus of Bucks and Blades, who descend from the city upon the village of Rederring, must necessarily be military officers. They were not so in Gilbert's production. It is much better, then, to take them out of regimentals — the most trying costume for any chorus of different sizes and shapes — and to present them in the handsome mufti of genuine post-Regency swells. He frees Mad Margaret from pantomime rags and throws away her traditional bundle of straw and poppies.

Most of this has been rosy-hued. What of the complaints? No true Savoyard should admit, of course, that there is room for complaint. But I have still to regret Gilbert's lack of gallantry with the middle-aged woman. It is not easy to pardon his way with Lady Jane and the song that begins the second act of Patience. Beyond that in complaint I cannot go. And if a puzzled playgoer still beats his brow and reiterates his "Why?" I must reply merely in a phrase from another dramatist: "I understand a fury in your words — but not the words." Let us leave it at that.

The professional bridesmaids of Ruddigore in elaborate draperies that were considered becoming a decade or so ago; and right, in the new costumes designed by Peter Goffin.