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.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Beginnings 1.2 The partnership years through the deaths of the authors 1.3 After the authors' deaths and early 20th Century 1.4 The new Savoy Theatre 1.5 Closing of the old company; A new company 2 Eras 3 See also 4 Notes 5 References 6 External links

[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 directrix 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, a Christmas entertainment, 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 Opera Comique theatre in London. Also in 1877, Carte hired Helen Lenoir as his assistant. Lenoir was 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. According to principal comedian George Grossmith, the company was very tight-knit: "We are all a very happy family."^[1]

The Sorcerer was successful enough 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.^[2] 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, and sued Carte for breaking the partnership agreement. The matter was settled in court, where a judge ruled in Carte's favour. Despite this legal victory, Carte was ultimately unsuccessful in his attempts to control the performance copyrights for the operas that he produced.^[3]

[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 by 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 quarrelled 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 had written The Chieftain for the Savoy in 1894 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 of Kensington 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 1908-09, reviving interest in the operas, while touring companies continued to play them in the provinces. After the two repertory seasons, however, 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 as stage manager and later director. Gordon had been a member of the company under Gilbert's direction, and he fiercely 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 (and Cox and Box, which was made into a short curtain raiser), 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, after Gordon's death, 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. Many of these traditional stagings are imitated today in productions by both amateur and professional companies.

Helen Carte died in 1913, and Carte’s son Rupert D'Oyly Carte inherited the company. According to H. M. Walbrook, "Through the years of the Great War they continued to be on tour through the country, drawing large and grateful audiences everywhere. They helped to sustain the spirits of the people during that stern period, and by so doing they helped to win the victory."^[4] Carte let the existing touring continue during World War I, 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.

In 1917, the company made the first complete recording of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, The Mikado for the Gramophone Company (later known as His Master's Voice). Rupert D'Oyly Carte supervised the company's recordings, including eight more acoustic recordings through 1924, and a series of complete electrical recordings in the late 1920s and early 1930s. There were additional recordings, in high fidelity, for Decca Records, in the early 1950s and stereo recordings in the late 1950s and early 1960s, all supervised after his death by Rupert's daughter, Bridget D'Oyly Carte.^[5]

The main company made a triumphant return to London for the 1919-20 season^[6] and played major London seasons in 1919-20, 1921-22, 1924, 1926, touring the rest of the time. 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, who redesigned The Gondoliers and The Mikado. His 1926 costumes for the latter were retained by all subsequent designers until 1982. Other redesigns were by Percy Anderson, George Sheringham, and Peter Goffin, a protégé of Carte's daughter Bridget.

For London seasons, Carte engaged guest conductors, first Geoffrey Toye, then Malcolm Sargent, who examined Sullivan’s manuscript scores and purged the orchestral parts of accretions.^[7] So striking was the orchestral sound 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 details of the orchestration sounded so fresh that some of the critics thought them actually new... the opera was played last night exactly as written by Sullivan." Carte also hired Harry Norris, who started with the touring company, then was Toye's assistant before becoming musical director.

[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.^[8] The old house had three tiers; the new one had two. The seating capacity was increased from 986 to 1,158. The theatre reopened 135 days later on October 21, 1929,^[9] with The Gondoliers, designed by Ricketts and conducted by Sargent.^[10] George Sheringham designed new productions that season of H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and Patience (1929, with other designs contributed by Hugo Rumbold),^[11] and he later designed costumes for Trial by Jury and Iolanthe.^[12]

Carte also nurtured a long association with Sadler's Wells Theatre until he died in 1948. The Savoy also hosted London seasons for the company in 1930-31, 1933, 1941, 1951, 1954, 1961, and 1975. Other London seasons, mostly at the Sadler's Wells Theatre, included each summer from 1935-39, 1942, summer seasons from 1947-50, 1953, 1956-57, 1958-59, 1960-61, 1967-68 and then seasons every year from 1970 to 1982, mostly at Sadler's Wells, but also some at Royal Festival Hall. The company continued to tour the British provinces and abroad when it was not in London, and these tours also often included London suburbs.^[13]

The company’s musical director from 1929 was Isidore Godfrey, who retained the position until 1968, and guest conducted the company in 1975, as part of the centenary season at the Savoy Theatre, when all of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas from Trial by Jury to The Grand Duke were presented in chronological order. This was presided over by Royston Nash, who was at the company's musical helm from 1971 to 1979. Other guest conductors included Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir Charles Groves, Boyd Neel, and Sir Charles Mackerras.

After Rupert died in 1948, 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.^[14]

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 London. A three-LP recording of this performance was released, which included songs from all of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, including Thespis.

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 it produced operas by Jacques Offenbach, Franz 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 not 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 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 include 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 contralto roles 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 patter 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 left the company in 1959, after more than eight years in that position, still a relatively young man.

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, Sadler's 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

• Gilbert and Sullivan performers

[edit] Notes

1. ^ George Grossmith's description of the company
2. ^ Article on the fracas at the Opera Comique
3. ^ Information about the struggle to control copyrights
4. ^ Walbrook, H. M. Gilbert & Sullivan Opera, A History and a Comment, Chapter XVI (1920) London: F. V. White & Co. Ltd.
5. ^ Links to detailed descriptions of the various series of D'Oyly Carte recordings
6. ^ Information about the 1919-20 season
7. ^ Isidore Godfrey, who was later the company's musical director, recalled, in The Gilbert & Sullivan Journal, September 1964, that when he joined the touring Company, he played the harmonium in the orchestra, but no harmonium parts are called for in any of the Savoy opera manuscript scores.
8. ^ Programme with photos of the new theatre and productions
9. ^ Savoy Theatre programme note, September 2000
10. ^ Information about the 1929-20 season and the new designs
11. ^ Illustrations of the Sheringham designes for Pinafore, Pirates and Patience
12. ^ Rollins, Cyril and R. John Witts. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in Gilbert and Sullivan Operas (1961) London: Michael Joseph, Ltd.
13. ^ Information on D'Oyly Carte Broadway appearances after 1934 - the earlier information is incomplete
14. ^ Dates and details from Raymond Mander & Joe Mitchenson, Gilbert and Sullivan, Vista Books, London 1962

[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, Ltd.  (and four supplements published in 1966, 1971, 1976, and 1983)

• Jones, Brian (2005). Lytton, Gilbert and Sullivan’s Jester. London: Trafford Publishing. 

• Joseph, Tony (1994). D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, 1875-1982: An Unofficial History. London: Bunthorne Books.  ISBN 0-950-79921-1

• Gilbert and Sullivan Journal, v. VII, p.23 (May, 1953).

[edit] External links

• D'Oyly Carte Opera Company Website
• Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte
• Memories of the D'Oyly Carte website
• Article on Carte family
• Article on G&S's leading ladies
• Links to the various series of D'Oyly Carte recordings
• Information about new D'Oyly Carte recordings (1990 - 2000)
• Account of the "Fracas at the Opera Comique" in 1879