I heard Peter Maxwell
Davies - relatively recently appointed
Master of the Queen’s Music - on the
radio last week. He was asked "how
did it all begin?" The reply may
be a surprise for those many music lovers
who find the composer’s music too radical
to stomach. He said he was taken to
a Gilbert and Sullivan opera performance
when an extremely young child and that
was it: "I was hooked". Music
had to be his life.
Gilbert and Sullivan
also played a part in my own early childhood
attachment to music although not quite
in that "Road to Damascus"
category. Of the handful of records
in our house, it was Vocal Gems from
the Gondoliers that turned me on.
The combination of melody and rollicking
rhythms had me playing the record over
and over again.
However, it is my experience
that when Gilbert and Sullivan comes
up as a subject among those who know
the works (and it will tend to be an
older generation) then the majority
view is of vehement antipathy. There
are several reasons why this is the
case; the main one, I suspect, being
that the first encounter many people
had with one of the operas would be
an amateur production that did not do
full justice to the work. Although such
productions in school and church halls
throughout the land constituted a great
British tradition, they did not necessarily
do the cause much good. Gilbert and
Sullivan did not write for amateurs.
On the other hand, the copyright stranglehold
that the D’Oyly Carte Company had on
professional performance up to forty
years ago did not help either because
it preserved a Victorian style of delivery
that, to many, seemed stuffy and outmoded.
This opera guide is
one of over twenty Naxos has now produced
and is in accord with the usual format
of a musically illustrated talk. Untypically,
there are two generous discs adding
up to a total of nearly two hours forty
minutes. The first quarter hour is taken
up with biographical background on the
two men and then we are taken chronologically
through all the Savoy operas but concentrating
on the better ones. There is some detailed
analysis which helps to show the skill
with which Sullivan set the words and
this is backed up by discussion of the
context and sources of Gilbert’s biting
satire, his targets including the law,
the House of Lords, the forces and so
on. What struck me, on being taken through
the operas, is not how dated the satire
is but how relevant much of it is today.
This may say more about the slow rate
of institutional change in Britain than
it does about Gilbert (1836-1911).
Considerable justice
is done to Sullivan (1842-1900) as a
composer and there is time to well illustrate
his own satirising skill in pastiche-ing
musical styles from Baroque counterpoint
to Rossini coloratura. I felt a little
more could have been made of Gilbert’s
skill in providing internally rhythmic
verse that went well beyond rhyming
couplets. He may not have been particularly
musical but his gift for poundingly
rhythmical alliterative lines was a
gift to Sullivan and was an ability
much admired by subsequent lyric writers,
notably Cole Porter.
Thomson Smillie’s script,
as in other guides, is comprehensive
and well paced, and David Timson’s narration
delivered in artificial actors’ diction,
something that irritates me but may
not bother others. The booklet is good
value with a substantial essay by Smillie.
This package will be
informative and possibly (and hopefully)
inspiring to newcomers but, with its
wealth of musical old favourites, should
satisfy old hands.
John Leeman
NAXOS OPERA EXPLAINED 8.558166-67 [79:29 +
78.40] 
