The Complete Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019816503X ISBN 13: 9780198165033

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1996

Synopsis

The comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan are a performing arts phenomenon. Wildly popular when first produced, they are if anything even more popular today. The Savoy Operas are available on records and compact discs, on audio and video tapes, on television, film, and radio, as well as through the more traditional medium of stage performances by both amateur and professional companies. Indeed, the works of Gilbert and Sullivan are produced more frequently than the plays of Rodgers and Hammerstein or any other musical partnership.
The Complete Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan provides the complete text of all thirteen Gilbert and Sullivan operas still performed today, from Trial by Jury and The Sorcerer to Utopia Unlimited and The Grand Duke, and including all their greatest triumphs--H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado. No other book provides such extensive commentary on the texts of the Savoy Operas. Each work is thoroughly annotated, with the text, including stage directions, given on the right-hand page, and the notes on the left (keyed by line numbers). The annotations provide a wealth of information--everything from the identity of real-life people mentioned in the opera, to clear explanations of obscure words and phrases (such as legal terms) and other literary references, to comments from first-night critics, and much more. In addition, Bradley has written a marvelously informative introduction to the book as well as superb introductions to each piece, describing the genesis of the work, its performance history, and other fascinating tidbits (for instance, Sullivan wrote the music for H.M.S. Pinafore while wracked with pain from a kidney stone, and he wrote the score of The Pirates of Penzance while living at 45 East 20th Street, in New York City).
A goldmine of information on the most popular light operas in the repertoire, The Complete Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan will delight the hearts of Savoyards everywhere.

About this title

Review:

Gilbert and Sullivan, librettist and composer, were classically Victorian gentlemen whose comic operas for the Savoy Theater under impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte have endured down to the present day despite the disappearance of the British imperial world which they lampooned. Theirs was a happy combination of Sullivan's cheerily catchy tunes and Gilbert's witty lyrics which captured the comedy of universal human nature. Ian Bradley, annotator of an earlier Gilbert and Sullivan collection, completes and updates the record with the inclusion here of the last collaborations of the two, and new introductions to the operettas that reflect modern interpretations.

About the Author:

Ian Bradley is one of the world's leading authorities on Gilbert and Sullivan, the editor of a previous annotated edition of the Savoy Operas, and a consultant to the D'Oyly Carte Company on historical matters.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 019816503X
• ISBN 13: 9780198165033
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 1216
• Editor: Bradley Ian