For more than a century the comic operas of William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan have delighted audiences all around the world. Between 1871 and 1896 they created words and music for 13 operas. Although they worked well together, they were characteristically unalike. The differences in their personalities and life-styles brought on frequent spats. Gilbert wrote the words for their operas. His amusing, hilarious rhymes and tricks of phrasing added color, variety, and vigor to his topsy-turvy plots. Sullivan wrote the music. His lighthearted tunes have been hummed, whistled, and played ever since. William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911) was first a government clerk, then a lawyer, and finally a dramatist. He was born on Nov. 18, 1836, in London. While at Ealing School he wrote several student dramas. He attended King's College. The verses he wrote while studying law, first published in papers and magazines, were collected in two books, ‘Bab Ballads' and ‘More Bab Ballads'. Until he collaborated with Sullivan, he was a successful but not an outstanding dramatist. Arthur Seymour Sullivan - Sir Arthur Sullivan, detail of a portrait by John Millais, 1888; in the National Portrait Gallery, …
(1842–1900) was Victorian England's most famous composer of popular and sacred songs and oratorios. ‘Onward! Christian Soldiers' is his best-known hymn; ‘The Lost Chord' is one of his songs. Sullivan was born in London on May 13, 1842, the son of a poor Irish musician. As a boy he was a soloist with the Chapel Royal choristers. His superior talents won him scholarships at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at the Leipzig Conservatory in Germany. ‘The Tempest', based on the Shakespearean play, won him fame before he was 20. The two met in 1870. Within a year their first opera, ‘Thespis', was performed. It was not successful: they did not rejoin efforts until 1875. Then they created ‘Trial by Jury', which made fun of the judiciary. They had written it for Richard D'Oyly Carte. Within three years he formed the famous D'Oyly Carte Company to produce Gilbert and Sullivan operas. - Poster, c. 1880, for The Pirates of Penzance by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan.
Their most successful operas are: ‘The Sorcerer' (1877); ‘H.M.S. Pinafore' (1878); ‘The Pirates of Penzance' (1879); ‘Patience' (1881); ‘Iolanthe' (1882), thought to be their finest; ‘The Mikado' (1885), their biggest success; ‘The Yeoman of the Guard' (1888); and ‘The Gondoliers' (1889). After ‘The Gondoliers' the partners quarreled furiously—over who should pay for carpeting their theater, the Savoy. Gilbert's caricatures of government and officials angered Queen Victoria. She knighted Sullivan in 1883. Gilbert had to wait for Edward to ascend the throne before he was knighted in 1907. Sullivan died on Nov. 22, 1900; Gilbert, on May 29, 1911. |