Gilbert and Sullivan reviews

Gilbert and Sullivan reviews

Cellier • Ford • Sullivan: Haddon Hall, etc

Henry Waddington, Ed Lyon, et al: BBC Singers; BBC Concert Orchestra/Martin Yates (Dutton Epoch)
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Sullivan: The Light of the World

Natalya Romaniw, Eleanor Dennis, Kitty Whately, Robert Murray, Ben McAteer, Neal Davies; Kinder Children’s Choir; BBC Symphony Chorus; BBC Concert Orchestra/John Andrews (Dutton)
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The Scottish Opera conducted by Richard Egarr perform Sullivan's HMS Pinafore

Scottish Opera braved extraordinary critical snobbery for daring to inflict Gilbert and Sullivan on the supposedly cutting-edge Edinburgh Festival. The audiences nonetheless evidently enjoyed this one. Baroque specialist Richard Egarr treats Sullivan no less respectfully, bringing similar structural sense and springy energy to the score, and a cast of top-drawer voices headed by Toby Spence’s buoyant Ralph Rackstraw and Elizabeth Watts’s Josephine, with strong top notes and a pleasantly mischievous touch.

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Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore

'Richard Egarr brings springy energy to the score.' (Read more...)
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Royston Nash Conducts Gilbert & Sullivan's The Yeoman of the Guard

Performed by the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company & the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; conducted by Royston Nash
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Sullivan - Ivanhoe

Ivanhoe was the grand opera everyone told Sullivan he should write, instead of Mr Gilbert’s Savoy frivols. Launched with immense expense at D’Oyly Carte’s new opera house, it sank after a season, unprofitable more than unpopular, and was never seriously revived. The main earlier recording, a semi-amateur performance (Pearl CDS 9165, 1989), was inadequate. This one, planned by the late Richard Hickox, is another matter. We can at last hear what Sullivan conceived – and it’s impressive.

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Sullivan: The Rose of Persia

This late (1899), non-Gilbertian operetta has an oriental setting and a delicately coloured score. The performance is attractive, especially with the addition of six overtures, all given period-instrument style by the Hanover Band. George Hall
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Sullivan: Cox and Box; Trial by Jury

Sullivan’s first operetta sets a text by the humorist FC Burnand based on J Maddison Morton’s once famous farce, whose title – Box and Cox – it transposes. The ingenious score reveals the influences of Donizetti and Auber as well as Offenbach, and is the only one of the composer’s comedies written without Gilbert to survive in the repertoire. It has regularly been played, however, in a version modified by later hands, but this recording presents it in a new edition going back to Sullivan’s autograph. It’s worth having just on that account – the nimble instrumental writing is a joy.
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Sullivan: The Contrabandista; The Foresters (incidental music)

Before Sullivan met Gilbert he consorted with FC Burnand, sometime editor of Punch, on two shows, of which The Contrabandista of 1867 was the successor to Cox and Box. When the great partnership was faltering to a close in the 1890s, the operetta was revised as The Chieftain (the original title means ‘a smuggler’: the cast is largely a bunch of Spanish brigands).
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Sullivan: Gilbert and Sullivan Overtures

It should be 'Sullivan Overtures', since both these venture outside the Gilbert canon. Both have the Overturn di Ballo (as the composer originally spelt it, not 'Overture di Ballo'), which is purely a concert work, perhaps Sullivan's very best composition for orchestra; Marriner also gives the Macbeth overture, commissioned for Henry Irving's production of the play. Unhappily his Ballo is brusque and un-lilting, and the Macbethless convincingly proportioned than on David Lloyd-Jones's Victorian Concert Overtures (Hyperion CDA 66515).
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Sullivan: Gilbert and Sullivan Overtures

It should be 'Sullivan Overtures', since both these venture outside the Gilbert canon. Both have the Overturn di Ballo (as the composer originally spelt it, not 'Overture di Ballo'), which is purely a concert work, perhaps Sullivan's very best composition for orchestra; Marriner also gives the Macbeth overture, commissioned for Henry Irving's production of the play. Unhappily his Ballo is brusque and un-lilting, and the Macbethless convincingly proportioned than on David Lloyd-Jones's Victorian Concert Overtures (Hyperion CDA 66515).
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Sullivan: The Complete D'Oyly Carte Gilbert & Sullivan

As the resurrected D’Oyly Carte company continues to sharpen up its act and, with a little help from Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy, to win younger audiences, this seemed like a good time to go down memory lane for an objective reassessment of seminal G&S recordings. Decca’s nostalgic repackaging certainly appeals to me, though the old label reproduced on the CDs is anachronistic for the later issues and the documentation, as before, is minimal.
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Sullivan: Cox and Box

Sullivan’s early operetta Cox and Box (words not by WS Gilbert, but by FC Burnand) is usually heard in a shortened version lasting about 30 minutes. Here, as a curiosity, is the full, hour-long version, given by American performers – amateurs, as is obvious to the ear from general manner as well as out-of-tune notes. Bouncer’s attempted British accent is particularly painful in the extensive spoken dialogue.
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Sullivan: The Yeomen of the Guard

The use of leading opera singers doesn’t automatically guaranteethe success of G&S. To my mind Charles Mackerras’s star-laden Mikado (Telarc) was over-mannered in phrasing and tempo, and occasionally obscured Gilbert.
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Sullivan/Verdi

Charles Mackerras’s score for the ballet Pineapple Poll is a patchwork quilt of tunes from Gilbert and Sullivan operas. It has become a firm favourite and makes delightful listening; so too does the compilation from Verdi’s music that is The Lady and the Fool, another ballet about the love of a penniless clown for a rich society beauty. Mackerras and the LPO clearly enjoy themselves with these lively, radiant scores. Ian Lace

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Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance

‘It’s a joy economical, very’, as they sing in another Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The Pirates of Penzance is offered here on a single CD with nearly 80 minutes of music, a follow-up by Telarc and Mackerras to their version of The Mikado in similar format. Once again the overture is omitted (no great loss). The dialogue is likewise left out, so it seems a Gilbertian paradox that the booklet prints what we already have in song, rather than the speech we lack.
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Sullivan: Princess Ida; Pineapple Poll (arr. Mackerras)

The use of leading opera singers doesn’t automatically guaranteethe success of G&S. To my mind Charles Mackerras’s star-laden Mikado (Telarc) was over-mannered in phrasing and tempo, and occasionally obscured Gilbert.
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Sullivan: Overture di Ballo; Incidental Music from Henry VIII; Pineapple Poll Suite

The Gilbert-less Sullivan collection is a mixed bag. There’s a poised account of Di ballo from Mackerras, and Royston Nash brings real style and panache to the overtures Macbeth and Marmion and the ballet music from Victoria and Merrie England. But why represent Pineapple Poll in an arrangement for wind band?
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