Editing Ruddigore (section)

===Revisions in the 1920s===
[[File:William Bridges-Adams - Set Design for Ruddigore (1921).jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|[[William Bridges-Adams]]' Act II set design for the 1921 revival.]]

''Ruddigore'' was not revived professionally during the authors' lifetimes. When it received its first professional revival in December 1920 in Glasgow &ndash; and then in London, in October 1921 &ndash; the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company made a number of further cuts and changes that were incorporated in scores and used in subsequent D'Oyly Carte productions and recordings.<ref name=Hulme/><ref>Some of the cuts and changes seen in most modern scores may have been made after that date.  Two recordings from the period, in 1924 and 1931, do not agree on a musical text, which suggests that the changes were not made all at once.</ref> David Russell Hulme, editor of the Oxford University Press 2000 scholarly edition of the score, has attributed the cuts and other changes to the music principally to [[Harry Norris (conductor)|Harry Norris]], musical director of the D'Oyly Carte at the time of the Glasgow revival, and the modifications to the opera's orchestration, as well as the new overture, to [[Geoffrey Toye]].  He concluded that some lesser changes may have been made by [[Malcolm Sargent]], but in a few cases Hulme was uncertain as to which conductor was responsible for which change.<ref name=Hulme/><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20120303180347/http://www.gramophone.net/Issue/Page/February%201932/6/793074  Letters to ''The Gramophone''] by Toye and a reader, in response to a review by [[Herman Klein]] in 1932, retrieved 15 June 2009</ref>

The most conspicuous changes were as follows:

* Geoffrey Toye, the D'Oyly Carte musical director for the first London revival in 1921, supplied a new overture to replace the original overture arranged by [[Hamilton Clarke]].
* The playoffs to the Act I numbers "Sir Rupert Murgatroyd" (No. 2) and "If somebody there chanced to be" (No. 3) were shortened.
* In the Act I song "My boy, you may take it from me" (No. 7), the repetitions of the introduction were omitted, and only the last repeat with Richard was retained.
* The Act I duet "The battle's roar is over" (No. 8) was cut.
* Some cuts were made within the Act I finale (No. 15) to shorten transitions between sections.
* Drum rolls and other orchestral effects were added to the ghost scene in Act II (Nos. 19–20)
* The Act II recitative and patter song "Away, remorse" ... "Henceforth all the crimes" (No. 21a) was cut.
* The "Melodrame" (No. 24) was cut.
* The Act II finale was replaced. The finale as composed and revised by Sullivan had consisted of "When a man has been a naughty baronet", plus a modified reprise of "Oh, happy the lily" in 4/4 time. The replacement (ironically rather closer to Sullivan's discarded original) was a straight reprise of "Oh, happy the lily" in the form it had taken in the Act I finale, in 9/8 time.

The standard Chappell vocal score was revised in the late 1920s to reflect these changes, except that the "Melodrame" and "The battle's roar is over" continued to be printed. The G. Schirmer vocal score published in America agreed with the revised Chappell score, except that it also included Robin's Act II recitative and patter song "Henceforth all the crimes" and both versions of the Act II finale.

The publication of the Oxford University Press edition in 2000 made it easier to restore passages deleted from the opera. Due to the many different editions available and the work's complex textual history, there is no standard performing version of ''Ruddigore''. Comparing the two extant overtures, Gervase Hughes wrote:

<blockquote>[T]he original overture to ''Ruddigore'' ... is a crude "selection" hardly redeemed by its spirited ending. The final cadence is by no means typical of Sullivan. In this overture a "double chorus" ... is taken complete from the opera – an unsatisfactory move because it vitiates its effect in the proper place.  Nor is the orchestration of the passage particularly skilful. ...  When ''Ruddigore'' was revived after some thirty-four years this jumble was found unsuitable ... and a new overture (which has been used ever since) was written by Geoffrey Toye. No precedents were followed and there is nothing Sullivanesque about it except the actual tunes; if one of them is momentarily developed in a manner that suggests a haunted ballroom<ref>One of Toye's best-known compositions is a ballet, ''The Haunted Ballroom''.</ref> rather than a haunted picture-gallery there is no great harm in that.<ref>Hughes, pp. 137–38</ref></blockquote>