Abstract
In this innovative study of embodied performance, Goron examines acting and singing styles in the original performances of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas to discover whether they derived from and reflected the cultural values of the ‘respectable’ Victorian middle classes. The ‘restrained’ Savoy style is contrasted with that of the ‘low’ comedy and sexual ‘knowingness’ of contemporary burlesque to evaluate the significance of methods used at the Savoy.
Goron goes on to explore the role of W.S. Gilbert as ‘auteur’ in the creation of a theatrical brand which epitomised bourgeois cultural and material values. Stringent policies concerning the interpolation of non-scripted, semi-improvisatory ‘gags’ by performers are considered as challenges to the fundamental ideological, hierarchical and commercial requirements of the D’Oyly Carte organisation, and by implication to Victorian notions of professionalism and respectability.
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Notes
- 1.
RDC to AS, 26 August 1879 (DC/TM).
- 2.
‘It was quickly appreciated that this was the real H.M.S. Pinafore […] the orchestrations had a breadth, colour and tone which had been completely missing in the home-made products. It was found that under Gilbert’s careful training the lines had a wit and a meaning the very existence of which had hitherto been unknown’ (Prestige, 1971, p. 113). Prestige’s chapter provides a comprehensive guide to the production and reception of the first American D’Oyly Carte tours.
- 3.
Morning Advertiser, 27 November 1882.
- 4.
Era, 9 December 1877.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Era, 25 November 1877.
- 8.
Era, 25 August 1878 (G&S Archive).
- 9.
Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 4 April 1880 (G&S Archive).
- 10.
London Morning Advertiser, 27 November 1882 (G&S Archive). Although a restrained actor, Grossmith seems to have relied on his own personality rather than an ability to transform himself. Gilbert remarked of Grossmith that ‘I used to invent a perfectly fresh character each time […] but he always did it in his own way […]. It arose from the fact that his individuality was too strong to be concealed’ (St James Gazette, 23 June 1883, p. 5).
- 11.
Era, 21 March 1885, p. 14.
- 12.
Era, 9 December 1877.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Morning Post, 25 April 1881.
- 15.
The Standard, 25 April 1881.
- 16.
Daily News, 27 November 1882.
- 17.
Daily News, 7 January 1884.
- 18.
The Times, 11 May 1887.
- 19.
The Times, 4 October, 1888.
- 20.
The Times, 9 March 1896.
- 21.
Ruddygore was the original spelling. It was altered to Rudd i gore about a week after opening night in response to criticisms of implicit vulgarity.
- 22.
Grossmith’s Ruddigore costume included a red (‘ruddy’) waistcoat. The character’s appearance must have been sufficiently familiar to the intended audience at Toole’s Theatre to warrant the reference in the title.
- 23.
Quotations derive from the version prepared and published by Simon Moss (Taylor 2012), from the original licence copy filed in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. See Walters, 2000, p. 21.
- 24.
The Times, 27 November 1882.
- 25.
It is effectively reproduced by Martin Savage, playing Grossmith in Mike Leigh’s film Topsy-Turvy (1999).
- 26.
Daily News, 21 March 1887.
- 27.
Ibid.
- 28.
Era, 12 January 1884.
- 29.
Photographs show the 24-year-old Barrington inclining to stoutness in his first Gilbert and Sullivan role, Dr Daly in The Sorcerer, and growing stouter thereafter.
- 30.
This was an area of high-level homosocial gathering. Sullivan was a member of the Marlborough Club, ‘by far the most exclusive’, according to Goodman. He was proposed by Prince Christian and the Duke of Edinburgh. Gilbert belonged to the Junior Carlton Club. Both were situated in Pall Mall (Goodman 2000, pp. 84–5).
- 31.
Barrington performed this topical comic song, with lyrics by himself and music by Walter Slaughter, at the Coliseum for eight weeks in 1905 (Barrington 1908, pp. 128-128)
- 32.
Parlando is the technique in which the singing voice is made to approximate to speech.
- 33.
Temple’s 1902–1903 renderings of the Pirate King’s first act solo and ‘My object all sublime’ from The Mikado suggest a performer vocally past his best—breath control and high notes are not perfect. However, the performances are notable for focused tone, impeccable diction and palpable projection of character and personality. My observations depend on the recently refurbished private transfers of these cylinders made by Anthony Baker, which correct the speed errors of the commercially available CD transfers.
- 34.
In 1926, the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company made a short promotional film of Mikado excerpts in which Henry Lytton as Ko-Ko and Leo Sheffield as Pooh-Bah appear. Both artists had been directed by Gilbert, but not in these roles. The excerpts, though providing a valuable guide in matters of design and blocking, are too brief to be used for the analysis of individual characterisations.
- 35.
Billington, a mainstay of the touring circuit during the 1880s and 1890s, took over these roles in the main company from 1903. He was succeeded by Sheffield in 1917.
- 36.
Green goes on to provide an amusing anecdote in which Granville as Don Alhambra in The Gondoliers failed to bring on a prop snuff-box used to punctuate a certain speech. This resulted in a complete breakdown in his ability to remember either his dialogue or the subsequent song (Green 1962, p. 643).
- 37.
See Chapter 5, above.
- 38.
Such fidelity to original performance practice did not always pertain. Granville’s D’Oyly Carte co-star in the 1939 filmed Mikado, Martyn Green as Ko-Ko, seems to have embodied an evolution of a G&S role even within the restricted parameters of the company style. There were departures from Gilbert’s intended manner among some of the earliest performers. For example, Carte seems to have allowed George Thorne in the first Broadway production more liberty than Grossmith was permitted in London, presumably to avoid ‘the placid English style’ (Stedman 1996, p. 234). Thorne rose to the task by introducing a number of physical gags. During the early twentieth century, Ko-Ko assumed the characteristics of licensed clown. Unlike other characters in the oeuvre, a good deal of physical comedy was added to the playing of the role, often consisting of pratfalls and other sight-gags which bore little relevance to the text or dramatic situation. These may be witnessed in various forms in both the 1939 film under discussion and in the 1966 film of the then current D’Oyly Carte production.
- 39.
There are, of course, departures from stage practice necessitated by the expansion of the stage picture to the wider and more lavish requirements of a feature film. Blocking and proxemics are often not those of the stage productions, although some cases, notably the positioning for the Act Two trio, ‘The criminal cried’, are very close to the blocking recorded in the earliest D’Oyly Carte prompt books. Granville is given a costume similar to the then current design by Charles Rickets, but with a high, stiff, round collar. This encouraged some recurring business which could not have been achieved in the D’Oyly Carte costume of either the 1880s or that of the 1930s. In moments of uncertainty or embarrassment, Granville’s head retracts comically into the top part of his coat, like a tortoise going into its shell.
- 40.
However, they employed different singing styles. Granville’s vocal production is that of the operatic bass, unlike Barrington’s untrained parlando style.
- 41.
Subsequently cast as Little Buttercup in HMS Pinafore, she seemed to have been intended as a comic female counterpart to Barrington and Grossmith. An industrial accident during rehearsals for The Pirates of Penzance curtailed her stage career (Barrington 1908, p. 28).
- 42.
For the sake of clarity, I am using the modern term ‘director’, rather than the Victorian ‘stage manager’, or slightly later ‘producer’, for the person who performed this function.
- 43.
A good example would be Gilbert’s feud with the actress Henrietta Hodson. Having crossed swords during Gilbert’s Ought We to Visit Her? in 1874 over her refusal to follow his direction, Gilbert discovered in 1876 that she had been employed as the female lead at the Haymarket where several of Gilbert’s plays were to be staged. There ensued what Jane Stedman calls ‘an episode in the contest between actors and dramatists for control of the stage’ (Stedman 1972, p. 149). The upshot of this struggle for supremacy between leading lady and director was Hodson’s publication and distribution of a 22-page pamphlet which related the Persecutions which She has Suffered from Mr. William Schwenck Gilbert, a Dramatic Author (London 1877). Gilbert replied in print shortly afterwards. It is perhaps significant for the future casting of the operas that the agreement to work on The Sorcerer was made at the latter end of this dispute. See Crowther 2011, pp. 111–13, 125–8 and Stedman 1996, pp. 145–9.
- 44.
The attempt to cast the American singer and actor Lillian Russell, who had made a name for herself in the Gaiety operettas of the early 1880s, as Princess Ida in 1883 was beset with problems. Unwilling to conform to Gilbert’s rehearsal techniques, she was fired from the production and replaced by the resident artist, Leonora Braham.
- 45.
Most of the performers were young, even those playing somewhat ‘older’ roles—Grossmith and Temple were 30 and Barrington only 24. As for the ‘older’ female characters, the ‘veteran’ Mrs Howard Paul was 44 and Harriet Everard 34, only a few years older than the juvenile lead, Alice May, who was 30. Her replacement, Giulia Warwick, was 20 and the tenor lead, George Power, was 31.
- 46.
WSG to Helen Carte, 26 August 1879 (DC/TM).
- 47.
WSG was familiar with Wigan’s style. In an interview with William Archer he mentioned Wigan along with Mathews as admirable exponents of the mid-century burlesque (Archer 1904, pp. 106–31), prior to that genre’s later ‘debasement’. Gilbert’s own burlesque, Robert The Devil (1868), formed part of a Gaiety bill under Wigan’s management.
- 48.
It is, broadly speaking, the darker, full-sounding and often vibrato-rich ‘operatic’ timbre which predominated from the mid nineteenth century and which is still prevalent in the early twenty-first.
- 49.
In an interview in the Musical Herald in 1891, Lely remarks on his use of the ‘mixed voice’ or head voice in the high register, rather than falsetto, which strongly indicates training based in the ‘modern’ style. ‘Mr. Durward Lely’—Musical Herald, 1 May 1891. See also Potter (1998, p. 56).
- 50.
Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance attempts to entrap the younger Frederic in marriage. Lady Jane in Patience is the ‘leader’ of the female acolytes, and pursues the younger Bunthorne, a situation which recurs, albeit with less ridicule, in Iolanthe, where the Fairy Queen is attracted to, and gets, Private Willis. Katisha in The Mikado vengefully chases the young Prince, Nanki-Poo. Dame Carruthers (The Yeoman of the Guard) and Dame Hannah (Ruddigore) are both formidable figures who have solo numbers which deal with violence and torture. The Duchess in The Gondoliers has ‘tamed’ her ineffectual husband, etc.
- 51.
As has been mentioned in Chapter 2, the operas did move with the times to some extent in their reflection of changing attitudes. Utopia, Limited (1893) contains an ambiguous sung description of the New Woman, even though such a character does not appear on stage. The forthright and assertive Julia Jellicoe in The Grand Duke (1896) presents something of a departure for Gilbert, at least in the operas. She is a strong-minded, career-orientated actress whose calculating self-interest is no more or less admirable than the characteristics of most of the other characters of either gender in the piece.
- 52.
‘Workers and Their Work: Mr. W.S. Gilbert.’ Daily News, 21 January 1885, p. 3.
- 53.
London Morning Advertiser, 27 November 1882.
- 54.
‘A Theatrical Manager on the Morals of the Stage.’ Pall Mall Gazette, 15 February 1885, p. 11.
- 55.
‘Workers and Their Work: Mr. W.S. Gilbert.’ Daily News, 21 January 1885, p. 3.
- 56.
‘Topical Interviews. No. 88. Miss Nelly Farren.’ Unattributed newspaper clipping, bound in The Theatre (July–December 1880), Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.
- 57.
‘How They Write Their Plays: Mr. W.S. Gilbert.’ St James’s Gazette, 23 June 1893, p. 5. ‘As to rehearsals, there are in all three weeks for the artists to study the music; then a fortnight’s rehearsals without the music; finally, another three or four weeks’ rehearsals in position and with the music. The principals are not wearied with rehearsals until the chorus are perfect in their music.’
- 58.
Contract between George Grossmith and Richard D’Oyly Carte, 1877 (DC/TM).
- 59.
Commercial reasons could also have influenced Gilbert’s stringency. The text, available for purchase in the theatre, needed to correspond with what was spoken on stage. Audiences were buying Gilbert’s wit, rather than that of his performers, as part of the entertainment ‘package’.
- 60.
Letter from WSG to Helen Carte, 29 August 1893 (DC/TM).
- 61.
Letter from WSG to Mr James, 10 December 1889 (DC/TM).
- 62.
Letter from WSG to Mr James, 11 December 1889 (DC/TM).
- 63.
Ibid.
- 64.
Letter from WSG to Mr James, 13 December 1889 (DC/TM).
- 65.
Letter from WSG to RDC, 1 June 1885 (DC/TM).
- 66.
This argument is covered in some detail in Ainger (2002, p. 404–15).
- 67.
Letter from WSG to Helen Carte, 13 December 1906 (DC/TM).
- 68.
Nevertheless, it would be unjust to suggest that Gilbert was a snob. In an interview given to William Archer he sincerely praises the work of burlesque writers and actors of the past (‘Real Conversations’, 1904, p. 118). In a subsequent newspaper interview with Bram Stoker, Gilbert recognised the skill and professionalism of music hall performers. (‘The Tendency of the Modern Stage: A Talk with Sir W.S. Gilbert on Things Theatrical.’ Daily Chronicle, 2 January 1908, p. 8.)
- 69.
Gilbert’s contemporaries often remark that, in rehearsal, he expected very high standards and, although occasionally sarcastic, was never discourteous. Enforcement of the kind of stage discipline adopted by only a few practitioners at this time seems to have contributed to the myth of Gilbert as theatrical tyrant, as did Henrietta Hodson’s slanderous pamphlet (see n43, above). Walter Passmore recalled in 1930 that ‘Gilbert, who has such a name as a martinet, was never bullying or rude. His sarcasm, at its worst, was mild compared with what one hears today’ (Passmore 1930, p. 152). According to Cellier, writing three years after Gilbert’s death, ‘He never for a moment adopted the methods or language of a bullying taskmaster’ (Cellier and Bridgeman 1914, p. 50).
- 70.
Era, 18 June 1887.
- 71.
Morning Post, 8 June 1896.
- 72.
Also Era, 13 June 1896.
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Goron, M. (2016). ‘The Placid English Style’: Ideology and Performance. In: Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Respectable Capers'. Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59478-5_7
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