English playwright and humorist Sir William Schwenk Gilbert and composer Sir Arthur (Seymour) Sullivan (commonly referred to as Gilbert and Sullivan) worked together to establish a distinctive English form of operetta. Gilbert’s satire and verbal ingenuity were matched so well by Sullivan’s unfailing melodiousness, resourceful musicianship, and sense of parody that the works of this unique partnership won lasting international acclaim.
Gilbert began to write in an age of rhymed couplets, puns, and travesty; his early work exhibits the facetiousness common to writers of extravaganza. But he turned away from this style and developed a genuinely artful style burlesquing contemporary behaviour. Many of his original targets are no longer topical—Pre-Raphaelite aesthetes in Patience; women’s education (Princess Ida); Victorian plays about Cornish pirates (The Pirates of Penzance); the long theatrical vogue of the “jolly jack tar” (H.M.S. Pinafore); bombastic melodrama (Ruddigore)—but Gilbert’s burlesque is so good that it creates its own truth. As a librettist, Gilbert is outstanding not only because of his gift for handling words and casting them in musical shapes but also because through his words he offered the composer opportunities for burlesquing musical conventions.
Gilbert’s early ambition was for a legal career, and a legacy in 1861 enabled him to leave the civil service to pursue it. He was called to the bar in November 1863. In 1861, however, he had begun to contribute comic verse to Fun, illustrated by himself and signed “Bab.” These pieces were later collected as The Bab Ballads (1869), followed by More Bab Ballads (1873); the two collections, containing the germ of many of the later operas, were united in a volume with Songs of a Savoyard (1898).
Sullivan was the son of an Irish musician who became bandmaster at the Royal Military College; his mother was of Italian descent. He joined the choir of the Chapel Royal and later held the Mendelssohn Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, London, where he studied under Sir W. Sterndale Bennett and Sir John Goss. He continued his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory.
In 1861 he became organist of St. Michael’s, London, and in the following year his music to The Tempest achieved great success at the Crystal Palace. Then followed his Kenilworth cantata (1864); a ballet, L’Île enchantée, produced at Covent Garden (where Sullivan was organist for a time); a symphony and a cello concerto; the In Memoriam and the Overtura di Ballo overtures; and numerous songs.
Gilbert’s dramatic career began when a playwright, Thomas William Robertson, recommended him as someone who could produce a bright Christmas piece in only two weeks. Gilbert promptly wrote Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack, a commercial success, and other commissions followed. Meanwhile, Sullivan’s first comic opera was his setting of Sir Francis Cowley Burnand’s Cox and Box (1867). An operetta, the Contrabandista, also on a libretto by Burnand, was produced in the same year. In 1870 Gilbert met Sullivan, and they started working together the following year. Together they created Thespis, or the Gods Grown Old (first performance 1871) and Trial by Jury (1875), a brilliant one-act piece that won instant popularity and ran for more than a year.
These early works were followed by four productions staged by then-manager of the Royalty Theatre, Richard D’Oyly Carte: The Sorcerer (1877), H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879, New York; 1880, London), and Patience, or Bunthorne’s Bride (1881). Carte built the Savoy Theatre in 1881 for productions of the partners’ work, which collectively became known as the “Savoy Operas”; they included Iolanthe, or the Peer and the Peri (1882), Princess Ida, or Castle Adamant (1884), The Mikado, or the Town of Titipu (1885), Ruddigore, or the Witch’s Curse (1887), The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), and The Gondoliers (1889).
By this time, however, relations between the partners had become strained, partly because Sullivan aimed higher than comic opera and because Gilbert was plagued by a jealous and petty nature when it came to financial matters. A rupture occurred, and the two were estranged until 1893, when they again collaborated, producing Utopia Limited and later The Grand Duke (1896).
Aside from his work with Sullivan, Gilbert wrote several popular burlesques for the dramatic stage: Sweethearts (1874), Engaged (1877), and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (1891). He also created librettos for other composers; the music for his last opera, Fallen Fairies, or the Wicked World (1909), was by Edward German. His last play, The Hooligan, was performed in 1911. Gilbert was knighted in 1907.
After his split with Gilbert, Sullivan wrote the opera Haddon Hall (1892) to a libretto by Sydney Grundy. Sullivan also completed three other operettas: The Chieftain (1895), largely an adaptation of Contrabandista; The Beauty Stone (1898), with a libretto by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero and J. Comyns Carr; and The Rose of Persia (1889), with Basil Hood, who also wrote the libretto for The Emerald Isle, which was left unfinished by Sullivan and completed by Edward German.
In the course of his career, Sullivan independently composed a number of works in a more classical vein, including The Prodigal Son (1869), The Light of the World (1873), The Martyr of Antioch (1880), The Golden Legend (1886), and the “romantic opera” Ivanhoe. In addition, he wrote many hymn tunes, including “Onward! Christian Soldiers,” and his song “The Lost Chord” attained great popularity. In 1876 Sullivan accepted the principalship of the National Training School for Music (later the Royal College of Music), which he held for five years; he was active as a conductor, particularly at the Leeds Festivals from 1880 to 1898. He was knighted in 1883.
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