The comic operas of Gilbert & Sullivan

Think of British entertainment duos and who springs to mind? Morecambe and Wise. French and Saunders. Ant and Dec. But what about London’s Gilbert and Sullivan?

This writer-composer duo weren’t on-stage stars themselves. They made their names creating funny, light-hearted operas that were one of the biggest things to see on the late 19th-century stage.

The 14 comic operas created by William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) blended song with spoken dialogue. They poked fun at the establishment and parodied the customs of Victorian society.

These works became known as the Savoy Operas, named after the theatre built to showcase them. The operas were a major influence on the development of musical theatre and the West End.

Gilbert trained in the military and as a lawyer before his love for the arts – and knack for humour and sarcasm – led him to writing. He first worked as a playwright and a journalist, and later turned to writing the texts for comedies, pantomimes and other forms of light entertainment.

Sullivan was a musical prodigy from a young age, having studied at prestigious schools like London’s Royal Academy of Music and the world-leading conservatory in Leipzig, Germany. He became known as a talented composer who could tackle both serious and comic works, including plays, operas and other large-scale musical compositions.

In the mid-1870s, talent agent and theatre manager Richard D’Oyly Carte brought Gilbert and Sullivan together to produce a one-act comic opera called Trial by Jury. Gilbert and Sullivan had collaborated only once before on a 1971 Christmas operatic extravaganza called Thepsis.

Trial by Jury opened at the Royalty Theatre in Soho in March 1875. It was an immediate hit. Reviews from the opening night gushed about its originality, particularly how Sullivan’s music and Gilbert’s funny, satirical writing worked together in complete harmony.

The opera marked the start of the successful partnership between Gilbert, Sullivan and their producer, D’Oyly Carte, which peaked in the late 1870s and 1880s.

The Gilbert and Sullivan operas were so successful that D’Oyly Carte decided to open his own theatre to showcase the works. In 1881, the Savoy Theatre on the Strand became the new home for the pair's work. Their operas became known as the Savoy Operas.

Their first opera performed at the Savoy Theatre was Patience. The theatre was the first public building to be lit entirely by electricity, and Patience was illuminated on stage with this exciting new technology. “The effect was pictorially superior to gas,” The Times reported, “the colours of the dresses… appearing as true and distinct by daylight.”

D’Oyly Carte used the profits from these performances to build the luxury Savoy Hotel next door in the late 1880s.

Gilbert and Sullivan’s best known operas are:

• HMS Pinafore (1878), a tale about love and class set aboard a British Navy ship
• The Pirates of Penzance (1879), which follows the absurd adventures of a pirate apprentice
• The Mikado (1885), a topsy-turvy story taking aim at the British establishment, but set in a fictional Japanese town in which the white actors were made up to appear East Asian
• The Yeoman of the Guard (1888), which was set in the Tower of London and is the only one that ends with broken hearts

A night out at the Savoy was full of singing, dancing, tongue-twisters, hummable melodies and absolute absurdity. The rhyming schemes and satirical lyrics shaped the cheery musical comedies that followed in the 1900s. The on-stage silliness contained satires of Victorian society – social rankings, gender roles, the government, the law and, in the case of Iolanthe, even Queen Victoria herself.

Many of these operas continue to be performed today. Sometimes, parts of the original texts are revised. Gilbert’s characters and storylines are products of their time, and some feature sexist and racist stereotypes and language.

The relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan became strained the longer they worked together. The duo’s personalities could clash. They didn’t work together out of friendship, but because of the magic that happened when Gilbert’s texts and Sullivan’s music came together.

Things finally snapped in 1890 when Gilbert furiously objected to D’Oyly Carte spending profits from The Gondoliers on new carpets for the theatre’s front of house.

Sullivan, who already felt stifled by Gilbert’s artistic dominance at the Savoy, couldn’t understand why he kicked up a fuss over “a few miserable pounds”. This famous argument essentially marked the end of their relationship.

Gilbert continued to write plays and take on other theatrical projects. Our collection includes objects he used to write with while at home in Harrow during this period. Sullivan, meanwhile, distanced himself from the lighter operas of his past to focus on more serious work.

The duo worked together again on a couple more operas in 1893 and 1896. But neither found the same dizzying heights of success in their post-breakup solo careers as they did together.