Gilbert and Sullivan

The operatic partnership between librettist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan started in 1871 with the two-act extravaganza Thespis, written for John Hollingshead’s Gaiety Theatre. Seeing potential in the collaboration, impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte brought the two creators together again for a short one-act “opener” Trial by Jury in 1875. That success was so great that he founded the Comedy Opera Company with the intent to produce such creations on a larger scale—starting with The Sorcerer in 1877. It was really with the ensuing H.M.S. Pinafore (1878) and The Pirates of Penzance (1880), however, that “G&S” became a national and international phenomenon, even creating a “Pinafore-mania” in the United States. Subsequent major successes included Iolanthe (1882), The Mikado (1885), The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), and The Gondoliers (1889), although their final two collaborations in the 1890s, written following the fracturing of the relationship between the three, proved less successful. The term “Savoy Opera” might properly refer only to those pieces staged from 1881 onwards in D’Oyly Carte’s newly-built Savoy Theatre (i.e., midway through the run of Patience), but it is conventionally used to describe all thirteen comic operas from the Gilbert/Sullivan/Carte collaboration, including those four written before 1881 (and even Thespis, with which Carte was not connected). It has sometimes been extended to include works in a similar style written by one of the pair with another collaborator (e.g. Gilbert and Cellier’s The Mountebanks, Hood and Sullivan’s The Rose of Persia) or entirely by other artists from within the Savoy orbit (e.g. Hood and German’s Merrie England), although it is now generally used as a synonym for “Gilbert and Sullivan.” This distinguishes Gilbert and Sullivan’s work both from other styles of comic opera and music theatre (e.g. opera buffa, opéra bouffe, Singspiel, extravaganza, and burlesque) and from “grand” or “serious” opera (normally without dialogue). The earliest literature on Gilbert and Sullivan was written for a very wide readership, and tended to be guides to the operas; some of these were very perceptive, and they remain useful even more than a century later. Subsequently, the writings have become increasingly specialized, representing a wide variety of disciplinary approaches, including but not limited to philology, critical theory, music analysis, socioeconomic studies, and reception history. Regardless of the lens through which they have been viewed, the Savoy Operas have proved to be highly rewarding for study, as the writings itemized here demonstrate.