Editing The Pirates of Penzance (section)

==Background==
[[File:Joseph Ferdinand Keppler - The Pirate Publisher - Puck Magazine - Restoration by Adam Cuerden.jpg|'' The Pirate Publisher – An International Burlesque that has the Longest Run on Record'', from ''[[Puck (magazine)|Puck]]'', 1886: Gilbert is seen as one of the British authors whose works are stolen by the pirate publisher.|thumb|300px]]
''The Pirates of Penzance'' was the only [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] opera to have its official premiere in the United States. At the time, American law offered no [[copyright]] protection to foreigners. After the pair's previous opera, ''[[H.M.S. Pinafore]]'', achieved success in London in 1878, approximately 150 American companies quickly mounted unauthorised productions that often took considerable liberties with the text and paid no royalties to the creators.<ref name=Prestige>Prestige, Colin. "D'Oyly Carte and the Pirates: The Original New York Productions of Gilbert and Sullivan", pp. 113–148 at p. 118, [https://archive.today/20120715191328/http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/handle/1808/5875 Papers Presented at the International Conference of G&S] held at the [[University of Kansas]], May 1970, edited by James Helyar. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Libraries, 1971</ref><ref>Allen (1979), p. 2</ref><ref>Goodman, Andrew. ''Gilbert and Sullivan at Law'', pp. 204–205, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (1982), {{ISBN|0838631797}}</ref> Gilbert and Sullivan hoped to forestall further "copyright piracy" by mounting the first production of their next opera in America, before others could copy it, and by delaying publication of the score and libretto.<ref>[http://www.edwardsamuels.com/illustratedstory/isc10.htm International copyright pirating] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081028222322/http://www.edwardsamuels.com/illustratedstory/isc10.htm |date=28 October 2008 }}, Edward Samuels, accessed 25 July 2009</ref> They succeeded in keeping for themselves the direct profits of the first American production of ''The Pirates of Penzance'' by opening the production themselves on Broadway, prior to the London production, and they also operated profitable US touring companies of ''Pirates'' and ''Pinafore''.<ref name=Prestige/> However, Gilbert, Sullivan, and their producer, [[Richard D'Oyly Carte]], failed in their efforts, over the next decade, to control the American performance copyrights to ''Pirates'' and their other operas.<ref>Rosen, Zvi S. [https://ssrn.com/abstract=963540 "The Twilight of the Opera Pirates: A Prehistory of the Right of Public Performance for Musical Compositions"], ''Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal'', Vol. 24, 2007, pp. 1157–1218, 5 March 2007, accessed 24 October 2012</ref>

Fiction and plays about pirates were ubiquitous in the 19th century.<ref>Adams, Cecil, "[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2729/why-are-pirates-depicted-with-a-parrot-on-their-shoulder Why are pirates depicted with a parrot on their shoulder? What's the origin of the skull and crossbones pirate flag?]" ''The Straight Dope'', 12 October 2007</ref> [[Walter Scott]]'s ''[[The Pirate (novel)|The Pirate]]'' (1822) and [[James Fenimore Cooper]]'s ''[[The Red Rover]]'' were key sources for the romanticised, dashing pirate image and the idea of repentant pirates.<ref name=Williams130>Williams, p. 130</ref> Both Gilbert and Sullivan had parodied these ideas early in their careers. Sullivan had written a comic opera, ''[[The Contrabandista]]'', in 1867, about a hapless British tourist who is captured by bandits and forced to become their chief. Gilbert had written several comic works that involved pirates or bandits. In Gilbert's 1876 opera ''[[Princess Toto]]'', the title character is eager to be captured by a brigand chief. Gilbert had translated [[Jacques Offenbach]]'s operetta ''[[Les brigands]]'', in 1871.<ref name=Williams130/> As in ''Les brigands'', ''The Pirates of Penzance'' absurdly treats stealing as a professional career path, with apprentices and tools of the trade such as the crowbar and [[Club (weapon)#Types|life preserver]].<ref>Williams, pp. 131–132</ref>

===Genesis===
While ''Pinafore'' was running strongly at the [[Opera Comique]] in London, Gilbert was eager to get started on his and Sullivan's next opera, and he began working on the libretto in December 1878.<ref>Ainger, p. 166</ref> He re-used several elements of his 1870 one-act piece, ''[[Our Island Home]]'', which had introduced a pirate "chief", Captain Bang. Bang was mistakenly apprenticed to a pirate band as a child by his deaf nursemaid. Also, Bang, like Frederic in ''The Pirates of Penzance'', had never seen a woman before and felt a keen sense of duty, as an apprenticed pirate, until the passage of his 21st birthday freed him from his articles of indenture.<ref>[[Eaton Faning|Faning, Eaton]] and [[Shapcott Wensley]]. Extra Supplement: ''Our Island Home'' in ''Musical Times'', Vol. 55, No. 859 (1 September 1914), pp.&nbsp;1–12</ref><ref>Gänzl, p. 29</ref> [[George Bernard Shaw|Bernard Shaw]] believed that Gilbert drew on ideas in ''[[Les brigands]]'' for his new libretto, including the businesslike bandits and the bumbling police.<ref>Shaw (Vol. 1), p. 784</ref> Gilbert and Sullivan also inserted into Act II an idea they first considered for a one-act opera parody in 1876 about burglars meeting police, while their conflict escapes the notice of the oblivious father of a large family of girls.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20210224222829/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1879/08/01/80694429.pdf "A Talk With Mr. Sullivan"], ''The New York Times'', 1 August 1879, p. 3, accessed 22 May 2012</ref> As in ''Pinafore'', "there was a wordful self-descriptive set-piece for Stanley ["[[The Major-General's Song]]"], introducing himself much as Sir Joseph Porter had done ... a lugubrious comic number for the Sergeant of Police ... a song of confession for Ruth, the successor [to] Little Buttercup", romantic material for Frederic and Mabel, and "ensemble and chorus music in turn pretty, parodic and atmospheric."<ref name=ORC>Gänzl, Kurt. [http://operetta-research-center.org/pirates-penzance-slave-duty-comic-opera-2-acts-w-s-gilbert-music-arthur-sullivan "''The Pirates of Penzance, or The Slave of Duty'': Comic opera in 2 acts by Gilbert & Sullivan]", Operetta Research Center, 5 October 2016</ref>

Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte met by 24 April 1879 to make plans for a production of ''Pinafore'' and the new opera in America.<ref>Ainger, p. 168</ref> Carte travelled to New York in the summer of 1879 and made arrangements with theatre manager [[John T. Ford]]{{efn|Ford had been one of the few managers who had paid Gilbert and Sullivan any kind of fee for performing ''Pinafore'' in America, and his reward for a small gesture was great.<ref>Stedman, p. 169</ref>}} to present, at the [[Fifth Avenue Theatre]], the authorised productions. He then returned to London.<ref name=Ainger169>Ainger, p. 169</ref> Meanwhile, once ''Pinafore'' became a hit in London, the author, composer and producer had the financial resources to produce future shows themselves, and they executed a plan to free themselves from their financial backers in the "Comedy Opera Company". Carte formed a new partnership with Gilbert and Sullivan to divide profits equally among themselves after the expenses of each of their shows.{{efn|Sullivan gave notice to the directors of the Comedy Opera Company in early July 1879 that he, Gilbert and Carte would not be renewing their contract to produce ''Pinafore'' with them and that he would withdraw his music from the Comedy Opera Company on 31 July. This followed a closure of the Opera Comique for repairs that Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte used to give them an argument that the original run of the production had "closed".<ref>Stedman, pp. 170–172; Ainger, pp. 165–167 and 194–195; and Jacobs, p. 126</ref>}} Sullivan wrote to a former producer, [[John Hollingshead]] of the [[Gaiety Theatre, London|Gaiety Theatre]], saying: "You once settled a precedent for me which may just at present be of great importance to me. I asked you for the band parts of the ''Merry Wives of Windsor'' ... and [you] said, 'They are yours, as our run is over....' Now will you please let me have them, and the parts of ''[[Thespis (opera)|Thespis]]'' also at once. I am detaining the parts of ''Pinafore'', so that the directors shall not take them away from the [[Opera Comique|Comique]] tomorrow, and I base my claim on the precedent ''you'' set." See Rees, p.&nbsp;89. The Comedy Opera Company directors engaged another theatre to play a rival production of ''Pinafore'', but they had no scenery. On 31 July, they sent a group of thugs to the Opera Comique to seize the scenery and props during the evening performance of ''Pinafore''. See Ainger, p.&nbsp;170 and Jacobs, pp.&nbsp;124–125. Stagehands and cast members managed to ward off their backstage attackers and protect the scenery. The police arrived to restore order, and the show continued. See Stedman, pp.&nbsp;170–171 and Gillan, Don. [http://www.stagebeauty.net/th-opcom.html "The Fracas at the Opera Comique"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110723085638/http://www.stagebeauty.net/th-opcom.html |date=23 July 2011 }}, ''The Theatre'', 1 September 1879, reprinted at the Stage Beauty website, accessed 6 May 2009. See also "The Fracas at the Opera Comique", ''The Era'', 10 August 1879, p.&nbsp;5 and "The Fracas at the Opera Comique", ''The Leeds Mercury'', 13 August 1879, p.&nbsp;8. The matter was eventually settled in court, where a judge ruled in Carte's favour about two years later. See Ainger, p.&nbsp;175</ref>

In November 1879, Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte sailed to America with a company of singing actors, to play both ''Pinafore'' and the new opera, including [[J. H. Ryley]] as Sir Joseph, [[Blanche Roosevelt]] as Josephine, [[Alice Barnett]] as Little Buttercup, [[Furneaux Cook]] as Dick Deadeye, [[Hugh Talbot]] as Ralph Rackstraw and [[Jessie Bond]] as Cousin Hebe, some of whom had been in the ''Pinafore'' cast in London.<ref name=Jacobs129>Jacobs, p. 129</ref> To these, he added some American singers, including [[Signor Brocolini]] as Captain Corcoran.<ref name=Ainger182>Ainger, pp. 182–183</ref> [[Alfred Cellier]] came to assist Sullivan, while his brother [[François Cellier]] remained in London to conduct ''Pinafore'' there.<ref>Jacobs, p. 127</ref> Gilbert and Sullivan cast talented actors who were not well-known stars and did not command high fees. They then tailored their operas to the particular abilities of these performers.<ref>Jacobs, p. 111; Ainger, pp. 133–134</ref> The skill with which Gilbert and Sullivan used their performers had an effect on the audience: as critic [[Herman Klein]] wrote, "we secretly marvelled at the naturalness and ease with which [the Gilbertian quips and absurdities] were said and done. For until then no living soul had seen upon the stage such weird, eccentric, yet intensely human beings&nbsp;.... [They] conjured into existence a hitherto unknown comic world of sheer delight."<ref>Jacobs, p. 113</ref> Gilbert acted as stage director for his own plays and operas. He sought [[Naturalism (theatre)|naturalism]] in acting, which was unusual at the time, just as he strove for realistic visual elements. He deprecated self-conscious interaction with the audience and insisted on a style of portrayal in which the characters were never aware of their own absurdity but were coherent internal wholes.<ref>Cox-Ife, William. ''W. S. Gilbert: Stage Director''. Dobson, 1978 {{ISBN|0-234-77206-9}}. See also Gilbert, W. S., [http://diamond.boisestate.edu/gas/html/stage_play.html "A Stage Play"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090930222738/http://diamond.boisestate.edu/gas/html/stage_play.html |date=30 September 2009 }}, and Bond, Jessie, [https://www.gsarchive.net/books/bond/intro.html ''Reminiscences'', Introduction] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120421204843/https://www.gsarchive.net/books/bond/intro.html |date=21 April 2012 }}</ref> Sullivan conducted the music rehearsals.<ref name=Ainger157>Ainger, p. 157</ref>

[[File:PiratesPenzance1879.gif|thumb|left|upright|Poster for the [[copyright performance]] at Paignton]]
Sullivan had sketched out the music for ''Pirates'' in England. When he arrived in New York, however, he found that he had left the sketches for Act I behind, and he had to reconstruct the first act from memory, or compose new numbers.<ref>Ainger, p. 177</ref><ref>Jacobs, p. 130</ref> Gilbert told a correspondent many years later that Sullivan was unable to recall his setting of the entrance of the women's chorus, so they substituted the chorus "Climbing over rocky mountain" from their earlier opera, ''[[Thespis (opera)|Thespis]]''.<ref>Ainger, p. 179</ref> Sullivan's manuscript for ''Pirates'' contains pages removed from a ''Thespis'' score, with the vocal parts of this chorus altered from their original arrangement as a four-part chorus. Some scholars (e.g. Tillett and Spencer, 2000) have suggested that Gilbert and Sullivan had planned all along to re-use "Climbing over rocky mountain," and perhaps other parts of ''Thespis''. They argue that Sullivan's having brought the unpublished ''Thespis'' score to New York, when there were no plans to revive ''Thespis'', might not have been accidental.<ref>March, Jerry. "Part of ''Thespis'' Score Discovered", ''The Savoyard'', Vol. XX, No. 1 (March 1981), p. 25; and Stedman, p. 95, n. 52</ref> In any case, on 10 December 1879, Sullivan wrote a letter to his mother about the new opera, upon which he was hard at work in New York. "I think it will be a great success, for it is exquisitely funny, and the music is strikingly tuneful and catching."<ref name=Jacobs129/> As was his usual practice in his operas, Sullivan left the [[overture]] for the last moment, often sketching it out and entrusting completion of "the details" to an assistant, in this case the company's music director, Alfred Cellier.<ref>Ainger, p. 180</ref>

''Pinafore'' opened in New York on 1 December 1879 and ran for the rest of December. After a reasonably strong first week, audiences quickly fell off, since most New Yorkers had already seen local productions of ''Pinafore''.<ref>Stedman, p. 174</ref><ref name=Jacobs129/> In the meantime, Gilbert and Sullivan raced to complete and rehearse ''The Pirates of Penzance''.<ref>Jacobs, pp. 130–132</ref> The work's title is a multi-layered joke. On the one hand, [[Penzance]] was a docile seaside resort in 1879, and not the place where one would expect to encounter pirates.{{efn|From medieval times and in later centuries, however, Penzance was subject to frequent raiding by Turkish pirates<ref>''Canon Diggens Archive'' (1910)</ref>}} On the other hand, the title was also a jab at the theatrical "pirates" who had staged unlicensed productions of ''H.M.S. Pinafore'' in America.<ref>Dexter, Gary. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7877394/Title-Deed-How-the-Book-Got-its-Name.html "Title Deed: How the Book Got its Name"]. ''The Telegraph'', 7 July 2010</ref><ref>Williams, p. 125</ref> To secure the British [[copyright]],{{efn|Performances had to be given in Britain before publication in order to secure copyright.<ref>Stephens, John Russell. ''The Profession of the Playwright: British Theatre 1800–1900'', Cambridge University Press (1992), pp. 104–115</ref>}} a D'Oyly Carte touring company gave a perfunctory [[copyright performance]] of ''Pirates'' the afternoon before the New York premiere, at the Royal Bijou Theatre in [[Paignton]], Devon, organised by [[Helen Lenoir]], who would later marry Richard D'Oyly Carte. The cast, which was performing ''Pinafore'' in the evenings in [[Torquay]], received some of the music for ''Pirates'' only two days beforehand. Having had only one rehearsal, they travelled to nearby Paignton for the matinee, where they read their parts from scripts carried onto the stage, making do with whatever costumes they had on hand.<ref>Ainger, pp. 180–81</ref>

===Original production and aftermath===
[[File:Grossmith as Gen Stanley.jpg|right|thumb|upright|[[George Grossmith]] as General Stanley, wearing [[Garnet Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley|Wolseley]]'s trademark moustache]]
''Pirates'' premiered on 31 December 1879 in New York and was an immediate hit.<ref name=Jacobs129/> On 2 January 1880, Sullivan wrote, in another letter to his mother from New York, "The libretto is ingenious, clever, wonderfully funny in parts, and sometimes brilliant in dialogue – beautifully written for music, as is all Gilbert does. ... The music is infinitely superior in every way to the ''Pinafore'' – 'tunier' and more developed, of a higher class altogether. I think that in time it will be very popular."<ref>Jacobs, p. 133</ref> Shortly thereafter, Carte sent three touring companies around the United States East Coast and Midwest, playing ''Pirates'' and ''Pinafore''.<ref name=Ainger182/><ref name=Stedman175>Stedman, p. 175</ref> Sullivan's prediction was correct. After a strong run in New York and several American tours, ''Pirates'' opened in London on 3 April 1880, running for 363 performances there.<ref>Bradley (1982), pp. 86–87</ref> It remains one of the most popular G&S works.<ref name=grove/><ref name=Smith>Smith, Tim. [http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/arts/bal-ae.li.opera16jul16,0,4347538.story "A consistent ''Pirates of Penzance''"],{{Dead link|date=June 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=no }} ''The Baltimore Sun'', 16 July 2009</ref> The London sets were designed by [[John O'Connor (painter)|John O'Connor]].<ref name=rwApp>Rollins and Witts, Appendix, p. VII</ref>

The critics' notices were generally excellent in both New York and London.<ref name=NYTrev>[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B06E4DA1131EE3ABC4953DFB766838B699FDE&scp=6&sq=%22Pirates+of+Penzance%22&st=p "Amusements; Fifth-Avenue Theatre"]. ''The New York Times'', 1 January 1880, p. 5</ref><ref name=Comiquerev>"Opera Comique", ''The Era'', 11 April 1880 p. 5</ref> The character of Major-General Stanley was widely taken to be a caricature of the popular general [[Garnet Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley|Sir Garnet Wolseley]]. The biographer Michael Ainger, however, doubts that Gilbert intended a caricature of Wolseley, identifying instead General Henry Turner, uncle of Gilbert's wife, as the pattern for the "modern Major-General". Gilbert disliked Turner, who, unlike the progressive Wolseley, was of the old school of officers. Nevertheless, in the original London production, [[George Grossmith]] imitated Wolseley's mannerisms and appearance, particularly his large moustache, and the audience recognised the allusion. Wolseley himself, according to his biographer, took no offence at the caricature<ref>See Ainger, pp. 181–182, and Kochanski, Halik. [https://books.google.com/books?id=rppyEHJfWhwC&pg=PA73 ''Sir Garnet Wolseley: Victorian hero''], p. 73, London, Hambledon Press, 1999. {{ISBN|1-85285-188-0}}</ref> and sometimes sang "I am the very model of a modern Major-General" for the private amusement of his family and friends.<ref>Bradley (1982), p. 118</ref>