Royalty Theatre programme, March 1875, with Cryptoconchoidsyphonostomata on the bill
Cryptoconchoidsyphonostomata,[1] or While it's to be Had was a one-act play styled a "successful romantic Extravaganza", written by R. H. Edgar and Charles Collette, an actor who also starred in the leading role of Plantagenet Smith and wrote the words and music of the play's hit song. It is chiefly remembered today as the curtain-raiser at the Royalty Theatre on the night of 25 March 1875, the night of the premiere of Gilbert and Sullivan's first opera produced by Richard D'Oyly Carte, Trial by Jury.
Cryptoconchoidsyphonostomata had been tried out in matinées at the Vaudeville Theatre and had premiered on 18 January 1875 at the Holborn Theatre "on the occasion of an amateur performance for the benefit of a charity."[2]
Sheet music for Collette's popular song from Cryptoconchoidsyphonostomata
Collette's song from the play, "What an Afternoon!", was published separately. The simple form of the lyric, with its title repeated every other line, caught the public fancy:
His trousers' sleeves were bright green-red, What an afternoon! With velvet collar of white black lead; What an afternoon! He also moved his legs when he walked, What an afternoon! And he generally spoke when he usually talked; What an afternoon!
The success of the song prompted unauthorized distribution of the words and music. Collette successfully sued a man named Goode, causing one paper to comment that the song should be retitled "What a Goode Afternoon".[5]
Cryptoconchoidsyphonostomata was replaced at the Royalty, after 25 March 1875, by other works for the remainder of the run of Trial. Nevertheless, it was popular and was repeated elsewhere, including at the Olympic Theatre on 10 July 1875, starring Collette. In 1881, it was presented at the Imperial Theatre.[6] Colette appeared in nearly 20 productions of the play between 1875 and 1881, revising the script over the years.[7]
Cryptoconchoidsyphonostomata, as Mr. Collette calls the whimsicality he has, with the aid of Mr. R. H. Edgar, invented for the display of his own powers, though it brings upon the stage four characters is in fact little more than a monologue. A street genius named Plantagenet Smith, whose versatile talents have not been enough to keep his head above water, has seen and loved Polly Toddleposh, the lovely and romantic daughter of a successful tradesman. His passion is returned, and he has ventured, strong in his impudence, into the presence of the worthy cit to coax, bully, or cajole him into a consent to his marriage. A prospect more uninviting than that of a son-in-law of this species, dirty, dingy and wholly disreputable, cannot easily be put before a father. Some delay is accordingly experienced before the consent of Mr. Toddleposh is wrung from him. To show how useful he can make himself, our Celadon displays before the astounded father the whole range of his accomplishments. Now he gives, with the accompaniment of a banjo, such as contributed to form the reputation of Mr. Charles Mathews, and, being encored, substitutes for it a piece of rhymed and rhythmical nonsense wholly indescribable; now he gives in breathless haste a conjunction of all the hardest and most crabbed specimens of scientific terminology, and again he imitates the wheedling jargon of the street swindler. So varied accomplishments soften the paternal heart, and, after half an hour's very clever, if wholly preposterous, amusement has been afforded, Mr. Toddleposh relents and promises the indefatigable lover an occupation and a wife. If the former can scarcely be pronounced worthy of his talents, the latter, as presented by Miss Linda Verner, is wholly in excess of his deserts. A balance may accordingly be struck.[2]
Notes
↑ The word Cryptoconchoidsyphonostomata does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary and is presumed to have been a bit of scientific-sounding nonsense coined for this play; the four Greek-derived components of the word mean "hidden shell tubular pores".
↑ Stone, David. "Linda Verner". Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, 2002, accessed 17 June 2008
↑ Short, T. Duff. "Law", The Musical World, 9 February 1878, p. 109
↑ "Dramatic Gossip", The Athenaeum, 14 May 1881, p. 666
↑ Walters, Michael. "Crypto", W. S. Gilbert Society Journal, Vol. 4, No. 28: Winter 2011, pp. 35–36.
Further reading
Ince, Bernand. "Natural -born Showman: the stage career of Charles Colette, actor and Comedian", Theatre Notebook: A Journal of the History and Technique of the British Theatre, 2009, Vol. 63, No. 1, pp. 20–37
Richard D'Oyly Carte was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer, and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era. He built two of London's theatres and a hotel empire, while also establishing an opera company that ran continuously for over a hundred years and a management agency representing some of the most important artists of the day.
Alfred Cellier was an English composer, orchestrator and conductor.
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is a professional British light opera company that, from the 1870s until 1982, staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere. The company was revived for short seasons and tours from 1988 to 2003, and with Scottish Opera it later co-produced two productions.
The Zoo is a one-act comic opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by B. C. Stephenson, writing under the pen name of Bolton Rowe. It premiered on 5 June 1875 at the St. James's Theatre in London, concluding its run five weeks later, on 10 July 1875, at the Haymarket Theatre. There were brief revivals in late 1875, and again in 1879, before the opera was shelved.
Rutland Barrington was an English singer, actor, comedian and Edwardian musical comedy star. Best remembered for originating the lyric baritone roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas from 1877 to 1896, his performing career spanned more than four decades. He also wrote at least a dozen works for the stage.
Durward Lely was a Scottish opera singer and actor. Although he had an extensive opera, concert and acting career, he is primarily remembered as the creator of five tenor roles in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas, including Nanki-Poo in The Mikado, for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
Frank Desprez was an English playwright, essayist, and poet. He wrote more than twenty pieces for the theatre, as well as numerous shorter works, including his famous poem, Lasca.
François Arsène Cellier, often called Frank, was an English conductor and composer. He is known for his tenure as musical director and conductor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company during the original runs and early revivals of the Savoy operas.
Charles Henry Collette was an English stage actor, composer and writer noted for his work in comedy in a long career onstage. He appeared, beginning in the late 1860s, in many Bancroft productions and was engaged by other managers, including J. L. Toole, John Hollingshead, Mary Anderson, Lydia Thompson and Herbert Beerbohm Tree, as well as performing in his own companies. He toured for some years as the title character in F. C. Burnand's The Colonel and played many military men.
Selina Simmons Belasco Dolaro was an English singer, actress, theatre manager and writer of the late Victorian era. During her career in operetta and other forms of musical theatre, she managed several of her own opera companies and directed the Royalty Theatre in London. She is best remembered as a producer of the original production of Trial by Jury by Gilbert and Sullivan. Dolaro sang the title role in the opera Carmen in the first English language version of that opera with the Carl Rosa Opera Company. She also wrote plays and novels.
Frederic Sullivan was an English actor and singer. He is best remembered as the creator of the role of the Learned Judge in Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury, providing a model for the comic roles in the later Savoy Operas composed by his brother Arthur Sullivan.
William Sydney Penley was an English actor, singer and comedian who had an early success in the small role of the Foreman in Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury. He later achieved wider fame as producer and star of the prodigiously successful Brandon Thomas farce, Charley's Aunt and as the Rev Robert Spalding in several productions of Charles Hawtrey's farce The Private Secretary.
Alice Julia Burville was an English soprano and actress, best known for her performances in Gilbert and Sullivan operas and other operettas in the 1870s and 1880s.
Furneaux Cook, born John Furneaux Cook, was an English opera singer and actor best known for baritone roles in the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and Alfred Cellier on the London stage. Cook appeared on stage for over 30 years in London, the British provinces and America.
Pretty Polly is a one-act playlet by Basil Hood, with music composed by François Cellier. The ten-minute long piece concerns the difficulties of a shy fellow who tries to use a talking parrot as a matrimonial agent.
James Hamilton Siree Clarke, better known as Hamilton Clarke, was an English conductor, composer and organist. Although Clarke was a prolific composer, he is best remembered as an associate of Arthur Sullivan, for whom he arranged music and compiled overtures for some of the Savoy Operas, including Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.
Trial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its popular companion piece, Jacques Offenbach's La Périchole. The story concerns a "breach of promise of marriage" lawsuit in which the judge and legal system are the objects of lighthearted satire. Gilbert based the libretto of Trial by Jury on an operetta parody that he had written in 1868.
Walter Henry Fisher was an English singer and actor of the Victorian era best remembered as the creator of the role of the Defendant in Gilbert and Sullivan's 1875 opera Trial by Jury. Beginning in the 1860s with much promise in comic plays, classics, Victorian burlesque, and as a versatile singer in opera and operetta, Fisher seemed headed for lasting stardom alongside his wife Lottie Venne. His career was limited, however, by his struggle with alcoholism, ending in the 1880s, and he died at age 44. Gustave Slapoffski described Fisher as "probably the finest comic opera tenor the English stage has ever known".
Belville Robert Pepper was a bass-baritone known for creating the role of the Usher in the first production of Trial by Jury in 1875 at the Royalty Theatre in London.
Linda Verner was a British singer and actress of the Victorian era who appeared in operetta, pantomime, Victorian burlesque and other comic and musical works in London and on tour in Britain and abroad from the 1870s to the early 1890s.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
