Before discovering real opera, I fell madly in love with The Yeomen of the Guard when my mum was in the chorus in a local production, and subsequently spent my teenage years doing as much G&S as possible.  As well as joining the same society as my mother, I fortunately had a number of like-minded schoolfriends and consequently was a founder member of our school G&S society, where I sang Pitti-Sing (aged 15) and Lady Angela (aged 16).  My final school production was Pirates, in which I played my namesake, Ruth.  Ironically, I was 17 at the time - just the age Frederic claims to be looking for in a bride - but was playing 47 (admittedly in my best costume ever).

The International G&S Festival started up when I was 16 and I spent a good chunk of each of three happy summers there, funded by babysitting and a paper round   The last year I went - 1996 - I'd just discovered opera, and suddenly I started discovering all the passages and genres that G&S were sending up.

I took part in several "Festival productions" in Buxton, as well as a Grand Duke which my local society brought to the Festival in the centenary year of its premiere.  As Don B rightly states, aged 16 I was a (nameless) daughter of Major General Stanley, and was given a big moment involving swooning in ecstasy at the tenor's top B flat .  (Some six years later I renewed my acquaintance with the tenor in question when we were both queueing for Rattle's Parsifal at the 2000 Proms!) Also in the chorus that year was Marc Shepherd, the American opera critic, as a tiny policeman who jumped into his neighbour's arms in fright at the thought of tackling the pirates without Frederic's aid.

I haven't done G&S for years (the last one was when I was at York, playing Lady Jane) but I hope to get back into it at some point, and I very much enjoy watching it.  Although I have technically sung all of the Savoy operas thanks to a 24-hour singathon at York University G&S (and the late-night singalong sessions in the post-show bar in Buxton) I have yet to appear on stage in The Sorceror, Utopia Limited, Princess Ida or - ironically, as it always has been and still is my favourite G&S - Yeomen (I'd love to have a shot at Phoebe sometime soon and then move on to Dame Carruthers in later life!)

That would be the Marc Shepherd who used to run this very useful site, no doubt:

http://www.cris.com/~oakapple/gasdisc/index.htm

In another thread somewhere, in the early days of this board, I said that Yeomen was my favourite, certainly from the musical point of view. I'd love to play Jack Point one day.

As for real opera, there are many who consider Yeomen to be a better example of the romantic opera Sullivan was trying to write in Ivanhoe. At least it has the distinction of having its overture published as an Eulenberg miniature score. And, Reiner, you're right, there is another missing song: When Jealous Torments Rack my Soul, which should have been sung by Shadbolt as the second song of act one. It was recorded on the new D'Oyly Carte version of Yeomen and the vocal score can be found here:

http://diamond.boisestate.edu/gas/yeomen/html/cut.html

Well we can argue the toss about this to while away the winter evenings, but about The Yeoman...

It was the old Doyley Carte faithful's view that The Yeoman was a serious opera, unlike the others.  The music is wonderful and I don't want to knock it, but to treat it as Sullivan's Parsifal is not doing it any favours.

It does not have  Gilbert's extraordinary surreal settings (Fairies and Peers, Bridesmaids and Ghosts, Executioners under sentence of death, soft hearted pirates, etc, etc,) but the plot is the sort of creaky old melodrama held together with improbablities (just shave your beard off and no one recognises you) and coincidences.

The sort of thing that gives Donizetti a bad name.

The basic premise (girl has anonymous wedding to the man she loves) is dealt with by Offenbach in La Perichole with Gallic naughtiness.  I admit I prefer The Yeoman.


There is pathos in Jack Point, but it is still a comic role. (I have a song to sing-o can move me to tears.)

I was listening to Iolanthe for the first time for years yesterday, and was struck at the tragic power of Iolanthe's final scena and ballad.  It is quite amazing to have the remotest tragic power in the loopiest setup Gilbert ever devised.  The five minutes of the penultimate number there are far more harrowing than The Yeoman.

The overture to The Yeoman is a gem, up with the best of C19 concert overtures.

I don't know the two missing numbers.  The number now recorded which was missed from the old Doyley Carte recordings is the irrepresible Rapture, rapture, but to include that as the penultimate number would have undermined the reputation of the work as basically tragic.  (Although the view of marriage proposed there is pretty grim.)

One item of a "real C19 opera" is a soprano/tenor love duet.

I can't remember one in The Yeoman.

Sullivan did indeed put together the overture for Yeomen himself (as well as Patience, Iolanthe and the Grand Duke). He was disappointed when the audience talked over it on the opening night, but that's how audiences were then.

It's true, DB, that there's no soprano-tenor love duet. I think Fairfax acts like a bastard at the end too. Of course, he married Elsie in the first place so as to deprive someone of an inheritance, not knowing that he was going to escape the executioner's block. But for it to have been a valid marriage, I wonder whether it would have had to be consummated. Would Elsie have kept her blindfold on for that? Isn't that why Catherine of Aragon claimed her marriage to Henry VIII was perfectly valid, because she had never consummated her earlier marriage with his elder brother?

I agree that not being recognized just because you've shaved off your beard is ludicrous, but there are many examples in drama of people disguising themselves as others, and women passing themselves off as men just by putting on a pair of trousers.

It is Gilbert's weakest plot nevertheless, and not original, but it has some fine lyrics. The "Jealous Torments" is very clever and Shadbolt ends up by admitting he is jealous of the cat who sits on Phoebe's lap, because "he lieth where I may not lie". That's quite sexual for G&S.

True indeed, but Fayrfax's oath prevents one...  the dungeon scene "How say you, Maiden, will you wed//Temptation, Oh, Temptation.." is the closest we get to this.   The entire libretto revolves around a couple separated, and a man who comes back from beyond the grave to claim his bride...    I'm sure the omission is more than intentional,  as it breaks with the convention we find in every other G&S opera


Fair point, but Germont might have had a quiet word with Alfredo about his unsuitable girlfriend, Mime might have given Siegfried Sieglinde's bits and pieces and told him what a great woman his mum had been...    but they didn't    But in an ideal world the Social Services would have taken Siegfried into care anyhow,  and arranged for him to be fostered by a Volsung family

There are some effective elements to Gilbert's YEOMEN libretto.  Notice how "Tis done! I am a bride! Oh little ring..."  is followed by "Were I thy bride..."    And the madrigal ("Strange Adventure") makes a neat "intermezzo".     Although I can't understand cutting "To love a heartless jade"...  Wilfrid's part collapses with it, and we don't really know who he is.

 

Well, in terms of lore learned and all that, I vote this thread of the month so far! The words 'board', 'never', 'amaze' and 'ceases' spring somehow to mind.

Anyway, on you go... 

The FIRST-act finales (second-act in the case of Princess Ida, which has a third act) are certainly one of the joys of G&S, but I'd question whether the Act 2 finales come into the same category.  In most cases they're a straight medley of tunes from earlier in the show.  The Gondoliers finale is more interesting, and the Yeomen finale even more so.  I'm not familiar enough with Utopia to remember which category it comes into.  I believe only Ruddigore has a completely musically original ending - and that's only if the "When a man has been a naughty baronet" finale is used, rather than a reprise of the end of the Act 1 finale.