Product Description

Gilbert and Sullivan's operas are some of the world's best-loved musical works, delighting audiences with their joyous wit, topsy-turvy logic and extravagant wordplay. This glorious treasury is the definitive annotated edition of all fourteen of their operas. From the partially lost work "Thespis", the first collaboration between W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, through the triumphant comic romps "The Pirates of Penzance" and "The Mikado", to lesser-performed gems such as the fanciful "The Sorcerer" and the acerbic lampoon "Patience", Gilbert's libretti are collected here in their most accurate and faithful form. There is a fascinating commentary on each work, telling the extraordinary stories behind the inspiration for the opera and its performance history, and giving plot summaries and original cast lists. Also containing original illustrations from Gilbert's "Bab Ballads", as well as extensive notes for every work, this ultimate Gilbert and Sullivan collection will delight all devotees of the incomparable duo.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #237063 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 867 pages

About the Author
Playwright/lyricist William S. Gilbert (1836-1911) and composer Arthur S. Sullivan (1842-1900) defined operetta or comic operas in Victorian England with a series of their internationally successful and timeless works known as the Savoy Operas.

Customer Reviews

Some strange editorial decisions - a missed opportunity
In many ways this is a delightful addition to the Gilbert and Sullivan bookshelf. Unlike many British publications before it, it does include the woefully incomplete THESPIS, the G & S opus 1, (although the synopsis on Penguin's own website omits to tell you this), but with the other 13 operas there are some peculiar editorial decisions that are never explained. We are told in the 'interview' on the Penguin website, that Mike Leigh spent many hours examining libretti and re-instating cuts and yet these seem to be very inconsistent. Pieces such as Princess Zara's "Youth is a boon avowed" (UTOPIA) are included despite the fact that the number was cut immediately after the press review dress rehearsal and never reinstated, and yet the Duke's song "Tho men of rank" (PATIENCE), present in the show up to the dress rehearsal, deleted, but now reinstated in performance, is not even mentioned in the annotations, which, unhelpfully, are at the back of the volume.

Anomolies too in SORCERER, where absolutely no mention is made of the differences between the opening of the original 1877 Act Two and that of 1884 which later became the standard. Then again, deleted dialogue is missed in PINAFORE where no mention is made of the dialogue scenes including Hebe in Act Two despite the fact that these were reinstated in the most recent D'Oyly Carte production and recording. No mention either of the Act One duet for Corcoran and Josephine.

YEOMEN included Meryll's "Laughing boy", performed on the first night and then cut as it held up the action, but not Wilfred's "Jealous torments", cut during rehearsal but often reinstated as it actually advances the action.

This was a chance to have ALL of Gilbert and Sullivan in one volume with all the text included in the body of each libretto without having recourse to copious annotations. Footnotes of explanation would have been good. Having said this, one has to admit that this is a handsome volume lavishly illustrated with Gilbert's line drawings - although it really is so annoying that a major publishing firm such as Penguin cannot get the title of The Yeomen of the Guard' right - both in the website 'Synopsis', on the dust jacket, and on the spine of the book it is spelt YEOMAN - this is just sheer carelessness.