D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
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The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company staged performances of Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy Operas in the UK, Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia and elsewhere from the 1870s until 1982. A new D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was formed in 1988 and toured until 2003, when it suspended operations.
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[edit] History
[edit] Beginnings
The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company officially celebrated its centenary in 1975, reckoning its first performances to have been in March 1875 when Trial by Jury received its first performance at the Royalty Theatre, London. In fact, Richard D'Oyly Carte was not then an independent impresario, but merely the manager for the directress of the theatre (Selina Dolaro), and it would be more accurate to take a later date as the founding of his own opera company. Nevertheless, what is certain is that Carte brought W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan together to produce their first hit. (An earlier collaboration for a different management, Thespis, had not been unsuccessful but made only modest impact.)
In 1876, Carte launched The Comedy Opera Company which in 1877 staged Gilbert and Sullivan’s new comic opera, The Sorcerer at the Opéra Comique theatre in London. This was enough of a success to prompt another collaboration, H.M.S. Pinafore, which opened in May 1878. A shaky start to the run (generally held to be due to a heatwave emptying theatres that summer) led to the parting of the ways for Carte and his four producing partners of The Comedy Opera Company. After his fellow investors lost confidence in H.M.S. Pinafore's viability and posted closing notices, Carte assumed the full financial burden of the continued run. Shortly, thereafter, Pinafore became a smash hit. Carte's disgruntled former partners, who had each invested in the production with no return, staged a public fracas sending a group of thugs to seize the scenery during a performance. Stagehands successfully managed to ward off their backstage attackers and protect the scenery. Carte's former partners then staged a rival simultaneous production of H.M.S.Pinafore, which was not as popular as the D'Oyly Carte production. The matter was settled in court, where a judge ruled in Carte's favour.
Also in 1877, Carte hired Helen Lenoir as his assistant. Lenoir turned out to be an extremely able businesswoman and soon managed many of the company's responsibilities, especially concerning touring. She travelled to America numerous times to arrange the details of the company's New York engagements and American tours.
[edit] The partnership years through the deaths of the authors
This marks the undisputed start of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. From 1880 to 1896, Carte’s London company presented each new work by Gilbert and Sullivan (and many others besides). Carte’s companies premièred The Pirates of Penzance practically simultaneously in New York and England (with Helen Lenoir managing the single British copyright performance that preceded the New York opening). This was followed Patience in 1881. With profits from the success of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership and his concert and lecture agency (his talent roster included Adelina Patti, Oscar Wilde, and Charles Gounod), Carte bought property further East along the Strand with frontage onto the Thames Embankment and built the Savoy Theatre.
Patience transferred to the new theatre on October 10, 1881. The Savoy seated nearly 1,300 people and was the first public building to be lit entirely with electric light. At a performance shortly after it opened, Carte stepped on stage and broke a glowing lightbulb to demonstrate the safety of the new technology. Iolanthe was the first opera to open at the Savoy Theatre. This was followed by a string of hits through the rest of the 1880s, including The Mikado. These shows played at the Savoy and toured the British provinces, and D'Oyly Carte companies played in New York and toured America. During the years when the Gilbert and Sullivan operas were being written, the company also produced operas by other composer–librettist teams, either as curtain-raisers to the G&S pieces, or to fill the theatre in between G&S pieces. Carte introduced the practice of licensing amateur theatrical societies to present works for which he had the rights, increasing their popularity and the sales of scores and libretti, as well as the rental of band parts. The company also licensed the J. C. Williamson company to tour the operas in Australasia. After Carte's first wife died in 1885, Carte married Helen Lenoir in 1888, who was, by this time, nearly as important in managing the company as Carte himself.
During the run of the last Gilbert and Sullivan success, The Gondoliers (1889), the three partners quarreled over production costs, including the cost of a new carpet for the Savoy Theatre lobby. Gilbert brought suit, and Sullivan sided with Carte. After the carpet quarrel, with The Gondoliers closing and no more Gilbert and Sullivan operas being written, the company next produced The Nautch Girl (1891-92) and The Vicar of Bray (1892). Then Sullivan's Haddon Hall held the Savoy's stage until April 1893, when the Savoy's first failure, Jane Annie, took over and lasted until July. The Cartes and the partnership's publisher, Tom Chappell, were finally able to convince Gilbert and Sullivan to collaborate on two more pieces. However, Utopia, Limited in 1893 was less successful than the previous collaborations produced by Carte, and The Grand Duke in 1896 was an outright failure. Meanwhile, Sullivan wrote The Chieftain for the Savoy with his old collaborator, F. C. Burnand.
Throughout the later 1890s, Carte's health was declining, and Mrs. Carte assumed more and more of the responsibilities for the opera company. She profitably managed the theatre and the provincial touring companies. The Savoy put on a number of shows for comparatively short runs, including Sullivan's The Beauty Stone, in 1898. In 1899, the Savoy finally had a success again, with Sullivan and Basil Hood's The Rose of Persia and, following Carte's and Sullivan's deaths, The Emerald Isle for which Edward German completed the score. After Richard D'Oyly Carte's death, Mrs. Carte leased the Savoy Theatre to William Greet in 1901. Under his management, the company revived Iolanthe and produced several new comic operas including The Emerald Isle, Merrie England and A Princess of Kensington (with music by Edward German, libretto by Basil Hood), which ran for four months in early 1903 and then toured. When A Princess closed at the Savoy, Mrs. Carte leased the theatre to other managements until December 8, 1906. The company's fortunes had declined for a time, and by 1904 there was only a single touring company winding its way among the British provinces. Mrs. Carte worked with Gilbert to stage successful repertory seasons of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas in London in 1906-07 and 1907-08, reviving interest in the operas, while touring companies continued to play them in the provinces. After the two repertory seasons, the company did not perform in London again until 1919.
[edit] After the authors' deaths and early 20th Century
Even after Gilbert's death in 1911, the company continued to produce "traditional" productions of the repertory until 1982. In 1911, the company hired J. M. Gordon, who had been a member of the company under Gilbert's direction, as stage manager and later director. Gordon preserved the company's traditions in exacting detail for 28 years. Except for Ruddigore, which underwent some cuts and was given a new overture in 1920, very few changes were made to the text and music of the operas as Gilbert and Sullivan had produced them in their lifetimes, and the company stayed true to Gilbert's period settings. The performing "traditions" evolved over time, but many of Gilbert's own directorial concepts survived, both in the stage directions printed in the libretti and as preserved in company "prompt books" from the era. In addition, some of the staging added over the years became traditional and was repeated again and again in successive productions. Indeed, many of these traditional stagings are imitated today in productions by both amateur and professional companies.
Helen D'Oyly Carte died in 1913, and Carte’s son Rupert D'Oyly Carte inherited the company. He let the existing touring continue during the Great War, but by 1920 he had re-established a small company to tour smaller towns. The smaller company was disbanded in 1927, and thereafter there was a single D’Oyly Carte Opera Company until its dissolution in 1982. Rupert determined to refresh the company's "dowdy" productions and soon instigated newsworthy London seasons for the main company, bringing in new designers such as Charles Ricketts to redesign The Gondoliers and The Mikado, the costumes for the latter, in 1926, being retained by all subsequent designers until the closure of the company in 1982. Other redesigns were by Percy Anderson, George Sheringham, and Peter Goffin, a protégé of Carte's daughter Bridget.
For London seasons, Rupert engaged guest conductors, first Geoffrey Toye, then Malcolm Sargent, who examined Sullivan’s manuscript scores and purged the orchestral parts of accretions. Sargent’s successor as musical director, Isidore Godfrey, recalled [1] that when he joined the company he played the harmonium in the orchestra, but no harmonium parts are called for in any of the Savoy opera manuscript scores. So striking was the orchestral sound thus produced by Sargent that the press thought he had retouched the scores, and Carte had the pleasant duty of writing to correct their error. "...the opera was played last night exactly as written by Sullivan."
[edit] The new Savoy Theatre
Carte also redesigned the Savoy Theatre. On June 3, 1929 the Savoy closed, and it was completely rebuilt to designs by Frank A. Tugwell with décor by Basil Ionides. The old house had three tiers; the new one had two. The seating capacity was increased from 986 to 1158. The theatre reopened 135 days later on October 21, 1929,[2] with The Gondoliers, designed by Ricketts and conducted by Sargent. Carte also nurtured a long association with Sadler's Wells until he died in 1948.
The company’s musical director from 1929 was Isidore Godfrey, who retained the position until 1968 and last conducted the company in 1975. Guest conductors included Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir Charles Groves, and Sir Charles Mackerras.
After Rupert died in 1948, and his daughter Bridget D'Oyly Carte took control. She, too, took steps to keep the productions fresh, engaging designers to redesign the costumes and scenery. Peter Goffin, who had previously redesigned The Yeomen of the Guard for Rupert, designed a unit set to facilitate touring, and produced new settings and costumes for Trial by Jury (1959), HMS Pinafore (1961), Patience (1957), Iolanthe (1961), The Mikado (1958 – settings only, most of the celebrated Charles Ricketts costumes being retained), Ruddigore (1948), and The Gondoliers (1958). Princess Ida was redesigned by James Wade in 1954.[3]
With the approaching end of the D’Oyly Carte monopoly on Gilbert and Sullivan performances, when the copyright on Gilbert’s words expired in 1961 (Sullivan’s music had already come out of copyright at the end of 1950), Bridget D'Oyly Carte made the company and all its assets over to an independent charitable trust to continue to present the operas. She endowed the trust with her company's scenery, costumes, band parts and other assets, together with a cash endowment, and the trust presented the operas on behalf of the trust until economic necessity forced the closure of the company in 1982.
[edit] Closing of the old company; A new company
The steady rise in the cost of touring gradually made the company unprofitable, until in the early 1980s it could no longer continue. It gave its last performance on February 27, 1982, at the Adelphi Theatre in the Strand, London. A three-LP recording of this performance was released, which included songs from all of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, including Thespis.
"Orpheus in the Underworld" (CD)
Dame Bridget D’Oyly Carte died in 1985, leaving in her will a £1 million legacy to enable the company to be revived. The company secured sponsorship from Sir Michael Bishop, who eventually became Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and BMI British Midland Airways (of which Bishop is chairman). From 1988 to 2003 the new company staged the Gilbert and Sullivan operas on tour and in London, and on occasion produced operas by Offenbach, Lehár and Johann Strauss II, including Orpheus in the Underworld, Die Fledermaus, La Vie Parisienne, and The Count of Luxembourg.
The new company did not employ many of the members of the original company and did follow the original D'Oyly Carte Opera Company's performing traditions, even staging some "concept" productions of the operas. For example, one employed a male actor in a female role. Others experimented with modernised design and directorial concepts, and even changes in orchestration. Although the company's productions were met with mixed reviews at best, some of its recordings have received enthusiastic praise. Once again, costs outran receipts, public subsidy was denied by the English Arts Council, and the company suspended productions in May 2003.
[edit] Eras
Gilbert and Sullivan aficionados frequently use the names of the principal comedians of the Company as shorthand for its different eras. Thus, after the sudden death of Sullivan's brother, who had created the role of the Learned Judge in Trial by Jury, the unknown George Grossmith was recruited, and though he left the company before the last three operas were written, all the principal patter parts are traditionally called the 'Grossmith' roles. Other important names from this period included Rutland Barrington, Jessie Bond, Rosina Brandram, Leonora Braham, Durward Lely and Richard Temple.
After Grossmith left, the most notable players of his roles during the rest of Gilbert's lifetime were Walter Passmore and Charles H. Workman. Both these singers made recordings of songs from the Savoy Operas, Passmore using a parlando style and Workman displaying a firm but not especially characterful baritone voice. No complete recordings of the operas were made before 1906. Complete recordings that included active members of the Company were not made until the 1920s.
From 1909 to the 1930s, the patter man was Sir Henry Lytton. His receiving a knighthood reflects the high profile of the D'Oyly Carte Company in the inter-war era. Lytton was very much an actor rather than a singer, and, at least towards the end of his career, his voice was not considered particularly attractive. By the time HMV embarked on a series of complete recordings of the operas, Lytton was not invited to record most of his roles, and the concert singer George Baker was brought in to substitute. Other names remembered from this period was Darrell Fancourt, whose portrayal of the Mikado was thought definitive in its day, as Bertha Lewis's portrayal of Katisha and the rest of the contraltos is remembered as perhaps the best of all times, and Nellie Briercliffe, whose vivacity and sweet voice in the soubrette roles won over audiences.
Lytton was succeeded in 1934 by Martyn Green who (with a gap during the Second World War, covered by Grahame Clifford) played the parts until 1951, when he and several other company members left to work in America. Green's time with the company is remembered for the early Decca recordings of the operas.
Green was succeeded by Peter Pratt, a fine comic actor. Unusually, for these roles, he had a strong bass-baritone voice rather than a light "character" baritone voice. He had begun with smaller roles and moved up gradually to become principal comedian. He left the company after more than eight years in that position, still a relatively young man, in 1959.
Pratt's successor was John Reed. His nimble dancing and amusing character voice caused him to be regarded by some G&S fans as the finest of all. Other stars from this era were Thomas Round, Donald Adams, Gillian Knight, Valerie Masterson and Kenneth Sandford, all of whom, except the last, left the company for the wider operatic stage of Covent Garden, Sadlers Wells, English National Opera, Aix-en-Provence and elsewhere. On Reed's retirement in 1979, his understudy James Conroy-Ward took over until the closure of the company in 1982.
From 1988, the revived company was less settled in its casting, using guest artists for each production. The most regularly seen patter men were Eric Roberts and Richard Suart, both of whom regularly perform the "Grossmith" roles for other opera companies. Others have included Sam Kelly, Jasper Carrott, Paul Barnhill, Paul Bentley and Simon Butteriss.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Cellier, François, Cunningham Bridgeman (1914). Gilbert and Sullivan and Their Operas. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
- Wilson, Robin, Frederic Lloyd (1984). Gilbert & Sullivan – The Official D'Oyly Carte Picture History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
- Rollins, Cyril, R. John Witts (1961). The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in Gilbert and Sullivan Operas. London: Michael Joseph, Inc. (and four supplements published in 1966, 1971, 1976, and 1983)
- Jones, Brian (2005). Lytton, Gilbert and Sullivan’s Jester. London: Trafford Publishing.
