Pirates is certainly great fun. But that chorus When the Foeman Bares His Steel brings us to a wider question. It's one of many examples of the "double chorus" in G&S - one tune is sung, then another and then both tunes are sung together (I know you know this, RT, but for the benefit of those who don't...) - and Sullivan claimed to have invented this device. Was he right? Are there earlier examples? I think the first instance in G&S is Gaily Tripping/We're Smart and Sober Men from Pinafore.

Quote: "Sullivan may have used two obvious contrasting meoldies, but surely using contrasting themes is standard musical practice - what about the quartet in Rigoletto?"


...Or indeed "A nice dilemma" in "Trial by Jury"

Tony, it was a vocal score I was thinking about re Cox and Box - thanks for the tip re Shrewsbury library. I agree about the missed Hickox opportunity. I have seen another CD of a "complete" Cox and Box with piano accompaniment - anyone heard it?

I'm a fan of Utopia, but have never found much to engage with in The Grand Duke (another VERY silly plot...) I'm with Reiner on Yeomen - but I always find the end moves me more than I like to admit! (Actually, even more than the end of Boheme...) Patience - I guess Oscar Wilde is still popular enough to be a surrogate model for Bunthorne in the 21st century mind. Donb - your mention of The Sorcerer reminds me of what good stuff there is there too - very funny - Lady Sangazure and John W Wells duet in Act 2 is wonderful - Yes! Yes! The family vault!

Ah, happy times spent with these pieces!

Of course, that would depend how it's staged    It is a fabulously powerful ending, I agree. There's lots of super material in YEOMEN, though, and I certainly don't dislike the work...  the Act One Finale ""All frenzied with despair") is terrific (I often find myself frustrated with Sullivan's capacity to write fabulous cliffhangers before the Intermission - obviously to prevent the audience going home, as anyone in the business will tell you - but he more rarely pulls off the same results at the ends of his operas).  My favourite tear-jerker in all of the G&S output though is in Yeomen, but not the end...  it's Elsie's "Little ring" aria, which is a marvellous thing. It takes a really decent string section to pull it off (all that across-the-strings stuff, it's like LOHENGRIN!) and unfortunately that doesn't always happen.  For once Gilbert avoids the sentimentality that too frequently creeps into his more thoughtful moments :-)   In sentiment and atmosphere (although entirely unrelated musically) it strongly reminds me of Amneris at the end of AIDA Act IV, who is in exactly the same circumstances - in love with a man in the cells below, who is about to be executed.  Because of the tradition of non-professional performances, people are unused to seeing seering emtions and impassioned acting in G&S - but I wonder what Sullivan hoped to get out of his Elsie in that aria, in performance?   I'd love to hear that done by a serious "dram-sopran" :-)

Here I had a chance to see what a girl's school could do with Happy days. But staging Carmen in boy's school would be more entertaining I think.

Reiner, tp

I am sorry to say we cheated, of course.

At every possible stage (a square in Seville, a bullfight) there were the usual swarms of street urchins singing treble.  (See Tony's comments on Barber of Seville thread.)

For Carmen, we had some lady who was probably the prima donna of Exeter Amateur Operactic Society and twice the age of all the other members of the cast.  (I remember my mother commenting acidly on the ineffectiveness of the Carmen continually pulling up her skirt to reveal thigh, presumably to semaphore the character's vampishness.)

For Michaela and the smuggler's molls we had senior girls from the small private girls school nearby.  I remember the producer (a junior English teacher) in despair at the Tavern scene in rehearsals.  At the end "Beat out the rhythm of the drum" (we used a different translation) the girls were meant to throw themselves back on the tables and kick up their legs to reveal their knickers.  Brian tore his hair out bewailing "It's meant to be great erotic art and you look as though you are being run over by a bus."

Although I had no good singing voice I was in the chorus.  In the street scenes I was in a grubby cassock and wide black hat to give suitable Spanish ecclesiastical colour (Could it have been in my mind when I chose to call myself Don B here?) 

For the tavern and smuggler scenes I wore a sombrero and an old bedspread wrapped around me.  I remember endlessly being squeezed behind that stage while the tenor sang the Flower Aria, ready to burst in to shanghai him.  (I have never cared for the Flower Song since.)

So Matthew Bourne had not come to 70s Devon.   

tp,

Alas, no. I have never been thought to have a singing voice fit for others to hear.  I was a decorative member of the school chorus.

I first heard Basilio's aria at the school opera the previous year, when it was sung by some 17 year old.  I expect I would find it vocally embarrassing to hear now, but he certainly put it across.

In fact I think Mozart's characterization of Basilio in Marriage of Figaro is wonderful, just in the little trio Cosa sento.

The ROH pinched that idea for their latest production if I remember correctly.

My mother's other comment on Carmen, after escorting my doting grandmother there, was "I don't think granny realised Carmen was a tart."