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.
History
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. After a shaky start to the run (generally held to be due to a heatwave emptying theatres that summer) Pinafore became a smash hit, which led to the parting of the ways for Carte and the other directors of The Comedy Opera Company, who wished to have this new goldmine to themselves. After a public fracas in which the directors tried to seize the scenery during a performance, Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan on the one hand, and the directors on the other, staged rival productions of H.M.S. Pinafore, until the public ended the argument by flocking to Carte’s staging and ignoring the rival.
The partnership years
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). In addition, Carte maintained touring companies in the UK and, from time to time, in Europe and America too. Carte’s companies premièred The Pirates of Penzance practically simultaneously in New York and England.After Gilbert and Sullivan’s final new collaboration, The Grand Duke in 1896, ran for only 123 performances (compared with 672 for The Mikado eleven years earlier), Carte presented revivals of the earlier hits and a few novelties by other writers. After the deaths of Sullivan and Carte in 1900 and 1901, the latter’s widow Helen, an astute businesswoman, worked with Gilbert to stage repertory seasons of the operas in London, while touring companies continued to play them in the provinces. By 1904 there was, in effect, only a single company.
After the authors' deaths
Even after Gilbert's death, and until 1982, the company continued to produce "traditional" productions of the repertory. 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 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 and soon instigated newsworthy London seasons for the main company, bringing in new designers such as Charles Ricketts, and the young Malcolm Sargent as musical director for the London seasons.
The smaller company was disbanded in 1927, and thereafter there was a single D’Oyly Carte Opera Company until its dissolution in 1982.
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.
Rupert D’Oyly Carte died in 1948, and his daughter Bridget took control. She too brought in new talent to redesign the productions. In 1961, the company’s monopoly of the operas lapsed with the end of the copyright on Gilbert’s words (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 trust with the aim of securing the company’s future.
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, at which songs were song from all of Gilbert and Sullivan's operas (including Thespis), was released.Dame Bridget D’Oyly Carte died in 1985, leaving in her will a £1 million legacy to enable the company to be revived. From 1988 to 2003 the new company staged the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and on occasion operas by Offenbach and Johann Strauss. Once again, costs outran receipts, public subsidy was denied by the English Arts Council, and the company suspended productions in May 2003. The new company did not employ many of the members of the original company and did not hew as closely to the performing traditions established by the old company, even staging some "concept" productions of the operas. For example, one employed a male actor in a female role.
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.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.
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 rather than a light baritone. 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.
His 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, 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.
"Orpheus in the Underworld" (CD)
See also
External links
- [D'Oyly Carte Opera Company Website]
- [Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte]
- [Memories of the D'Oyly Carte website]
References
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