Editing Gilbert and Sullivan (section)

===Early successes===

====''The Sorcerer''====
{{main|The Sorcerer}}
Carte's real ambition was to develop an English form of light opera that would displace the bawdy [[Victorian burlesque|burlesques]] and badly translated French [[operetta]]s then dominating the London stage. He assembled a syndicate and formed the Comedy Opera Company, with Gilbert and Sullivan commissioned to write a comic opera that would serve as the centrepiece for an evening's entertainment.<ref>Ainger, p. 130</ref>

[[Image:Sorc-Pin-Trial.jpg|thumb|An early poster showing scenes from ''The Sorcerer'', ''Pinafore'', and ''Trial by Jury'']]
Gilbert found a subject in one of his own short stories, "The Elixir of Love", which concerned the complications arising when a love potion is distributed to all the residents of a small village. The leading character was a [[Cockney]] businessman who happened to be a sorcerer, a purveyor of blessings (not much called for) and curses (very popular). Gilbert and Sullivan were tireless taskmasters, seeing to it that ''[[The Sorcerer]]'' (1877) opened as a fully polished production, in marked contrast to the under-rehearsed ''Thespis''.<ref>[http://gsarchive.net/sorcerer/html/index.html ''The Sorcerer''], ''The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive'', accessed 21 May 2007</ref> While ''The Sorcerer'' won critical acclaim, it did not duplicate the success of ''Trial by Jury''. Nevertheless, it ran for more than six months, and Carte and his syndicate were sufficiently encouraged to commission another full-length opera from the team.<ref>Stedman, p. 155</ref>

====''H.M.S. Pinafore''====
{{main|H.M.S. Pinafore}}
Gilbert and Sullivan scored their first international hit with ''H.M.S. Pinafore'' (1878), satirising the rise of unqualified people to positions of authority and poking good-natured fun at the Royal Navy and the English obsession with social status (building on a theme introduced in ''The Sorcerer'', love between members of different social classes). As with many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, a surprise twist changes everything dramatically near the end of the story.<ref>Bradley (1996), p. 178; and [[Bertram Bowyer, 2nd Baron Denham|Bowyer, Bertram (Lord Denham)]]. [https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/1998-04-01/debates/a0391994-4d85-4676-a5dc-f7b9fc366268/DOylyCarteOperaCompany "D'Oyly Carte Opera Company"], UK Parliament, 1 April 1998 (quote: "...the 'Gilbertian ending' ... after two acts in which the principal protagonists contrive to get themselves into a more and more convoluted state of utter hopelessness, a final twist – whimsical but wholly logical and even believable – makes everything come out all right again, and everyone lives happily ever after."</ref>

Gilbert oversaw the designs of sets and costumes, and he directed the performers on stage.{{refn|Gilbert was strongly influenced by the innovations in "stagecraft", now called stage direction, by the playwrights [[James Planché]] and especially [[Thomas William Robertson|Tom Robertson]].<ref>[http://gsarchive.net/gilbert/short_stories/stage_play.html ''A Stage Play'']; and Bond, Jessie, [http://gsarchive.net/books/bond/intro.html Introduction].</ref> |group=n}} He sought realism in acting, shunned self-conscious interaction with the audience, and insisted on a standard of characterisation in which the characters were never aware of their own absurdity.<ref name=Cox>Cox-Ife, p. 27</ref> He insisted that his actors know their words perfectly and obey his stage directions, which was something new to many actors of the day.<ref name=Cox/> Sullivan personally oversaw the musical preparation. The result was a crispness and polish new to the English musical theatre.{{refn|The director [[Mike Leigh]] wrote in 2006, "That Gilbert was a good director is not in doubt. He was able to extract from his actors natural, clear performances, which served the Gilbertian requirements of outrageousness delivered straight."<ref>Leigh, Mike. "True anarchists", [http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1938719,00.html], ''The Guardian'', 4 November 2006</ref>|group=n}} [[Jessie Bond]] wrote later:
{{blockindent|Our stage discipline was strict and unbending. Gilbert's word was law; he thoroughly worked out in his own mind every bit of action, by-play and grouping, and allowed no deviation from his plan. He...made drawings and took measurements with the minutest care.... He had unlimited fertility of invention in comic business and would allow no gag, no clowning, no departure from his own definite conception. Sullivan's musical conception was equally clear-cut and decided. Every part must be made subservient to the whole, and his sarcasms overwhelmed the transgressor with scorn. "And now, might I trouble you to try over my music," he would say to a singer too anxious to display his or her top notes. But there was nothing to hurt or offend us in this unswerving discipline, we took their good-humoured raillery as our due when we failed in our rendering or overstepped the bounds; and the patience and enthusiasm of that artistic pair so infected all of us that we worked willingly for hours and hours at rehearsals, trying with all our might to realize the conceptions of those two brilliant minds.<ref>Bond, Jessie. [http://gsarchive.net/books/bond/004.html ''The Reminiscences of Jessie Bond''], Chapter 4 (1930), reprinted at ''The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive'', 15 November 2008, accessed 21 August 2012</ref>}}

''H.M.S. Pinafore'' ran in London for 571 performances,<ref>Rollins and Witts, p. 6</ref> an exceptional run for the period.{{refn|The run of ''H.M.S. Pinafore'' was exceeded by that of the West End production of the operetta ''[[Les cloches de Corneville]]'', which opened earlier in the same year and was still running when ''H.M.S. Pinafore'' closed; ''Les cloches de Corneville'' held the record (705 performances) for London's longest musical theatre run until ''[[Dorothy (opera)|Dorothy]]'' (931 performances) surpassed it in 1886–1889.<ref>Traubner, p. 183; and Herbert, pp. 1598–1599, 1605 and 1907</ref>|group=n}} Hundreds of unauthorised, or "pirated", productions of ''Pinafore'' appeared in America.<ref name=Zvi>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, accessed 21 May 2007. See also Prestige, Colin. "D'Oyly Carte and the Pirates", a paper presented at the [http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/handle/1808/5875 International Conference of G&S] held at the [[University of Kansas]], May 1970</ref> During the run of ''Pinafore'', Richard D'Oyly Carte split up with his former investors. The disgruntled former partners, who had invested in the production with no return, staged a public fracas, sending a group of thugs to seize the scenery during a performance. Stagehands managed to ward off their backstage attackers.<ref>Stedman, pp. 170–171</ref> This event cleared the way for Carte, in alliance with Gilbert and Sullivan, to form the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which then produced all their succeeding operas.<ref>Rollins and Witts, pp. 7–15</ref>

The libretto of ''H.M.S. Pinafore'' relied on [[stock character]] types, many of which were familiar from European opera (and some of which grew out of Gilbert's earlier association with the [[German Reed Entertainment|German Reeds]]): the heroic protagonist ([[tenor]]) and his love-interest ([[soprano]]); the older woman with a secret or a sharp tongue ([[contralto]]); the baffled lyric [[baritone]] – the girl's father; and a classic villain ([[bass-baritone]]). Gilbert and Sullivan added the element of the comic [[patter song|patter-singing character]]. With the success of ''H.M.S. Pinafore'', the D'Oyly Carte repertory and production system was cemented, and each opera would make use of these stock character types. Before ''The Sorcerer'', Gilbert had constructed his plays around the established stars of whatever theatre he happened to be writing for, as had been the case with ''Thespis'' and ''Trial by Jury''. Building on the team he had assembled for ''The Sorcerer'', Gilbert no longer hired stars; he created them. He and Sullivan selected the performers, writing their operas for ensemble casts rather than individual stars.<ref name=t176>Traubner, p. 176</ref>

[[Image:Pirate King1.jpg|thumb|left|upright|The Pirate King]]
The repertory system ensured that the comic patter character who performed the role of the sorcerer, John Wellington Wells, would become the ruler of the Queen's navy as Sir Joseph Porter in ''[[H.M.S. Pinafore]]'', then join the army as Major-General Stanley in ''[[The Pirates of Penzance]]'', and so on. Similarly, Mrs. Partlet in ''The Sorcerer'' transformed into Little Buttercup in ''Pinafore'', then into Ruth, the piratical maid-of-all-work in ''Pirates''. Relatively unknown performers whom Gilbert and Sullivan engaged early in the collaboration would stay with the company for many years, becoming stars of the Victorian stage. These included [[George Grossmith]], the principal comic; [[Rutland Barrington]], the lyric baritone; [[Richard Temple (opera singer)|Richard Temple]], the bass-baritone; and [[Jessie Bond]], the [[mezzo-soprano]] [[soubrette]].<ref name=t176/>

====''The Pirates of Penzance''====
{{main|The Pirates of Penzance}}
''The Pirates of Penzance'' (New Year's Eve, 1879) also poked fun at [[grand opera]] conventions, sense of duty, family obligation, the "respectability" of civilisation and the peerage, and the relevance of a liberal education. The story also revisits ''Pinafore''{{'}}s theme of unqualified people in positions of authority, in the person of the [[Major General's Song|"modern Major-General"]] who has up-to-date knowledge about everything except the military. The Major-General and his many daughters escape from the tender-hearted Pirates of Penzance, who are all orphans, on the false plea that he is an orphan himself. The pirates learn of the deception and re-capture the Major-General, but when it is revealed that the pirates are all [[peerage|peers]], the Major-General bids them: "resume your ranks and legislative duties, and take my daughters, all of whom are beauties!"<ref>Bradley (1999), p. 261</ref>

The piece premiered in New York rather than London, in an (unsuccessful) attempt to secure the American copyright,<ref>Samuels, Edward. [http://www.edwardsamuels.com/illustratedstory/isc10.htm "International Copyright Relations"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081028222322/http://www.edwardsamuels.com/illustratedstory/isc10.htm |date=28 October 2008 }} in ''The Illustrated Story of Copyright'', Edwardsamuels.com, accessed 19 September 2011. Note the box "When Gilbert and Sullivan attacked the 'Pirates.{{'"}}</ref> and was another big success with both critics and audiences.<ref>Perry, Helga. [http://www.savoyoperas.org.uk/pirates/pp2.html "Transcription of an opening night review in New York"], Savoyoperas.org.uk, 27 November 2000, accessed 27 May 2009</ref> Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte tried for many years to control the American performance copyrights over their operas, without success.<ref name=Zvi/><ref>In one unsuccessful attempt, the partners hired an American, George Lowell Tracy, to create the piano arrangement of the scores of ''[[Princess Ida]]'' and ''[[The Mikado]]'', hoping that he would obtain rights that he could assign to them. See, Murrell, Pam. [https://blogs.loc.gov/music/2020/08/gilbert-sullivans-american-ally "Gilbert & Sullivan’s American Ally"], In the Muse, US Library of Congress, 5 August 2020.</ref> Nevertheless, ''Pirates'' was a hit both in New York, again spawning numerous imitators, and then in London, and it became one of the most frequently performed, translated and parodied Gilbert and Sullivan works, also enjoying successful 1981 [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]]<ref>[[Frank Rich|Rich, Frank]]. [https://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/09/theater/stage-pirates-of-penzance-on-broadway.html "Stage: ''Pirates of Penzance'' on Broadway"]. ''The New York Times'', 9 January 1981, accessed 2 July 2010</ref> and 1982 West End revivals by [[Joseph Papp]] that continue to influence productions of the opera.<ref>''[[Theatre Record]]'', 19 May 1982 to 2 June 1982, p. 278</ref>

In 1880, Sullivan's [[cantata]] ''[[The Martyr of Antioch]]'' premiered at the [[Leeds Festival (classical music)|Leeds Triennial Music Festival]], with a libretto adapted by Sullivan and Gilbert from an 1822 epic poem by [[Henry Hart Milman]] concerning the 3rd-century martyrdom of [[Margaret the Virgin|St. Margaret of Antioch]]. Sullivan became the conductor of the Leeds festival beginning in 1880 and conducted the performance. The [[Carl Rosa Opera Company]] staged the cantata as an opera in 1898.<ref>Stone, David. [http://www.gsarchive.net/whowaswho/C/CunninghamRobert.htm Robert Cunningham (1892–93)], Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, 4 September 2009, accessed 25 May 2017</ref>