Rupert D'Oyly Carte

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Rupert D'Oyly Carte (November 3, 1876 - September 12, 1948) was an English hotelier, theatre owner and impresario, best known as proprietor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1913 to 1948.

Carte's opera company continued to promote the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas that had originally been produced by his father, keeping them before the public by launching major London seasons, as well as touring internationally, and releasing recordings of the operas. He honoured the artistic intentions of the authors even while refreshing the productions. He also rebuilt the Savoy Theatre in 1929.

Contents 1 Life and career 1.1 Early life 1.2 Becoming head of the family business 1.3 Innovations and renovations at the Savoy 1.4 Later years 2 Surname and Residence 3 Psmith 4 Notes 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Life and career

[edit] Early life

Rupert D'Oyly Carte was born in Hampstead, England, the younger son of the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte and his first wife Blanche (née Prowse), who died in 1885. He was educated at Winchester College, noted as among the most intellectually rigorous of English public schools. He then spent some time with a firm of accountants before joining his father as an assistant in 1894.^[1]

In a newspaper interview given in the year of his death he recalled that as a young man he was entrusted, during his father's illness, with helping W.S. Gilbert with the first revival of The Yeomen of the Guard at the Savoy Theatre.^[2] Rupert's father, Richard, died in 1901, and Rupert's stepmother, the former Helen Lenoir (who had married Richard in 1888), assumed full control of most of the family businesses, which she had increasingly controlled during Richard's decline. Rupert's older brother, Lucas, a barrister, was not involved in the family businesses and died of tuberculosis in 1907.

In his 1922 memoir, Henry Lytton told a story about young Rupert and his father:

[Richard D'Oyly] Carte could take in the details of a scene with one sweep of his eagle eye and say unerringly just what was wrong. ...he noticed that Ko-Ko's love scene with Katisha might be improved, and so we went together for an extra rehearsal.... Mr. Carte said he would be Katisha and I, of course, was to be Ko-Ko. Now, to make love to a bearded man, and a man who was one's manager into the bargain, was rather a task, but we both entered heartily into the spirit of the thing. "Just act as you would if you were on the stage," was his advice, "though you needn't actually kiss me, you know!" ...Little Rupert D'Oyly Carte was there, and before the rehearsal commenced, I lifted him on to the bar counter, where he sat and simply held his sides with laughter watching me making earnest love to his father!" That "eye" for stagecraft... has been inherited in a quite remarkable degree by his son, Mr. Rupert D'Oyly Carte. He, too, has the gift of taking in the details of a scene at a glance, and knowing instinctively just what must be corrected....^[3]

[edit] Becoming head of the family business

In 1903 when he was aged 27, Rupert took over his late father’s role as Chairman of the Savoy Group which included the Savoy Hotel, Claridges, The Berkeley Hotel and Simpsons-in-the-Strand. In late 1906, Helen Boulter (Rupert's stepmother had remarried) acquired the performing rights to the Gilbert and Sullivan operas from Gilbert (she already had Sullivan's) and staged a repertory season at the Savoy Theatre, reviving the opera company, which had been in decline after 1901. 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, under Carte's direction, preserved the company's traditions in exacting detail for 28 years.

In 1907, Rupert married Lady Dorothy Milner Gathorne-Hardy (1889–1977) (the third and youngest daughter of John Stewart Gathorne-Hardy, 2nd Earl of Cranbrook (1839-1911)), with whom he had a son, Michael, and a daughter, Bridget (1908-1985). Michael was killed in a motor accident in Switzerland in 1932. Rupert and his wife built a country house, Coleton Fishacre, Devon, in 1925.

In 1913 on the death of his stepmother, Rupert inherited the Savoy Theatre, the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and the Savoy Hotel. After the repertory seasons in 1906-08, the company did not perform in the West End again until 1919,^[4] instead touring throughout Britain. 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."^[5] Nevertheless, Carte later recalled, "I went and watched the Company playing at a rather dreary theatre down in the suburbs of London. I thought the dresses looked dowdy.... I formed the view that new productions should be prepared, with scenery and dresses to the design of first class artists who understood the operas but who would produce a décor attractive to the new generation."^[6]

[edit] Innovations and renovations at the Savoy

During World War I Carte was away serving in the Royal Navy^[7] and no renovation work could be undertaken. On his return he put his aims into effect. In an interview in The Observer in August 1919 he set out his policy for staging the operas: "They will be played precisely in their original form, without any alteration to the words, or any attempt to bring them up to date."^[7] This uncompromising declaration was modified in a later interview in which he said:

...the plays are all being restaged... Gilbert's words will be unaltered, though there will be some freshness in the method of rendering them. Artists must have scope for their individuality, and new singers cannot be tied down to imitate slavishly those who made successes in the old days.^[7]

For his restagings, Carte hired Charles Ricketts, RA, 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, Hugo Rumbold and Peter Goffin, a protégé of Bridget D’Oyly Carte. Carte's first London season, at the Prince's Theatre, 1919-20, featured ten of the Savoy operas (all except Ruddigore, Utopia, Limited and The Grand Duke).^[8]

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.^[9] 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.

Carte also had the Savoy Theatre redesigned. 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 (which had decreased to 986 from its original 1,292) was restored nearly completely, to 1,200.^[10] The theatre reopened 135 days later on October 21, 1929,^[11] with The Gondoliers, designed by Ricketts and conducted by Sargent.^[12]

Despite its historical connection with Gilbert and Sullivan, most of Carte's London seasons were staged not at the Savoy but at two larger houses: the Prince's (now the Shaftesbury) Theatre (1919/20, 1921/22, 1924, 1926, 1942) and Sadler's Wells (1935, 1936, 1937, 1939, 1947 and 1948). His three Savoy seasons were in 1929/30, 1932/33, and 1941. In addition to year-round UK tours, Carte mounted tours of Canada (1927) and the USA (1934/35, 1936/37, 1939, and 1947/48).^[13]

[edit] Later years

Rupert and Lady Dorothy were divorced in 1941. Who’s Who rather unusually records that Carte obtained a decree nisi, in contrast to the usual conduct of upper class divorce in England at the time, when the husband would normally allow the wife to divorce him rather than vice versa (regardless of the circumstances). Lady Dorothy outlived her former husband by nearly three decades, dying in February 1977.^[14]

During World War II, Carte served as a King's Messenger, a person who carried important papers of state between heads of other governments and UK government.

Rupert D’Oyly Carte died at the Savoy Hotel in London, after a brief illness, on September 12, 1948 at the age of 71.

[edit] Surname and Residence

There seems little doubt that the family’s surname is Carte, D’Oyly being a given name. Leslie Bailey refers to his interviews with ‘Mr Carte,’ and later Kenneth Sandford recalled a conversation with the company manager in which Dame Bridget, before she received the accolade, was referred to as ‘Miss Carte’.^[15]

Rupert and Lady Dorothy D'Oyly Carte had a country house built for them in Devon between Paignton and Kingswear, named Coleton Fishacre, now owned by the National Trust. Rupert was a keen gardener and sailor, pastimes in which he indulged at this house. After her parents divorced, Bridget D’Oyly Carte took over the house, to which her father, who lived in London, would come for long weekends.

[edit] Psmith

The English comic novelist P. G. Wodehouse based a character on Rupert D’Oyly Carte or his brother Lucas. In the introduction to his novel Something Fresh, Wodehouse says that Psmith (originally named Rupert, then Ronald) was ‘based more or less faithfully on Rupert D’Oyly Carte, son of the Savoy theatre man. He was at school with a cousin of mine, and my cousin happened to tell me about his monocle, his immaculate clothes and his habit, when asked by a master how he was of replying, “Sir, I grow thinnah and thinnah”.’ Dame Bridget D’Oyly Carte, however, believed that the Wykehamist schoolboy described to Wodehouse was not her father but his elder brother Lucas.^[16] Lucas was also at Winchester.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Who Was Who, Vol IV, 1941-50, A & C Black, London, 1952
• Current Biography 1948, H W Wilson Co, New York, 1949
• Who’s Who in the Theatre, 10th edition, London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1947
• Jones, Brian (2005). Lytton, Gilbert and Sullivan’s Jester. London: Trafford Publishing. 
• Rollins, Cyril; R. John Witts (1962). The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in Gilbert and Sullivan Operas. London: Michael Joseph Ltd. 
• D'Oyly Carte Centenary booklet, compiled by Clemence Bettany and published by the D'Oyly Carte Company, 1975.
• Joseph, Tony (1994). D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, 1875-1982: An Unofficial History. London: Bunthorne Books.  ISBN 0-950-79921-1

[edit] External links

• Article on Carte family
• D'Oyly Carte Opera Company Website
• Simpsons-in-the-Strand
• The Berkeley
• Claridge's