Related Research Articles
George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theater director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals for the Marx Brothers and others. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the musical Of Thee I Sing in 1932, and won again in 1937 for the play You Can't Take It with You. He also won the Tony Award for Best Director in 1951 for the musical Guys and Dolls.
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) and to the works they jointly created. The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado are among the best known.
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. Its official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where it was well received by both audiences and critics. Its London debut was on 3 April 1880, at the Opera Comique, where it ran for 363 performances.
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London on 25 May 1878, and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical theatre piece up to that time. H.M.S. Pinafore was Gilbert and Sullivan's fourth operatic collaboration and their first international sensation.
Utopia, Limited; or, The Flowers of Progress, is a Savoy opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was the second-to-last of Gilbert and Sullivan's fourteen collaborations, premiering on 7 October 1893 for a run of 245 performances. It did not achieve the success of most of their earlier productions.
Of Thee I Sing is a musical with a score by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and a book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. The musical lampoons American politics; the story concerns John P. Wintergreen, who runs for President of the United States on the "love" platform. When he falls in love with the sensible Mary Turner instead of Diana Devereaux, the beautiful pageant winner selected for him, he gets into political hot water.
Dennis Hans Olsen AM is an Australian singer, actor, director and pianist. His performances include opera, musical theatre, cabaret, radio, television and film. He is best known as an exponent of "patter" roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operas and his performances of Noël Coward songs.
Sir Henry Lytton was an English actor and singer who was the leading exponent of the starring comic patter-baritone roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operas from 1909 to 1934. He also starred in musical comedies. His career with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company spanned 50 years, and he is the only performer ever knighted for achievements in Gilbert and Sullivan roles.
Jessie Charlotte Bond was an English singer and actress best known for creating the mezzo-soprano soubrette roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. She spent twenty years on the stage, the bulk of them with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
George Grossmith Jr. was an English actor, theatre producer and manager, director, playwright and songwriter, best remembered for his work in and with Edwardian musical comedies. Grossmith was also an important innovator in bringing "cabaret" and "revues" to the London stage. Born in London, he took his first role on the musical stage at the age of 18 in Haste to the Wedding (1892), a West End collaboration between his famous songwriter and actor father and W. S. Gilbert.
Our Island Home is a one-act musical entertainment with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Thomas German Reed that premiered on 20 June 1870 at the Royal Gallery of Illustration. The piece has five characters and is "biographical", in that the characters in the original production played themselves, except that they were given personalities opposite to their actual personalities.
A Song to Sing, O is a one-man musical play by Melvyn Morrow with songs by Gilbert and Sullivan and by George Grossmith, about the life of comedian and actor George Grossmith, who originated the principal comic roles for the most famous Savoy operas from 1877 through the 1880s. The plot concerns a fictional backstage interview given by Grossmith to an American reporter in 1889 during his last performance of The Yeomen of the Guard – indeed, his last performance for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. In between some interview gossip, Grossmith sings Gilbert and Sullivan songs, and some of his own songs to the reporter, and he enacts a scene from Grossmith's book, The Diary of a Nobody.
For nearly 150 years, Gilbert and Sullivan have pervasively influenced popular culture in the English-speaking world. Lines and quotations from the Gilbert and Sullivan operas have become part of the English language, such as "short, sharp shock", "What never? Well, hardly ever!", "let the punishment fit the crime", and "A policeman's lot is not a happy one".
Sir George Power, 7th Baronet was an operatic tenor known for his performances in early Gilbert and Sullivan operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, most famously creating the roles in London of Ralph Rackstraw in H.M.S. Pinafore (1878) and Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance (1880).
Lost Musicals is a British musical theatre project established in 1989 by Ian Marshall Fisher. It is dedicated to presenting lost or forgotten musicals by famous American writers, and has been responsible for the first revivals of the lesser-known works of writers such as Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter, Alan Jay Lerner, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern.
Isabella Hill, better known as Mrs Howard Paul, was an English actress, operatic singer and actress-manager of the Victorian era, best remembered for creating the role of Lady Sangazure in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera The Sorcerer (1877).
George MacFarlane was a Canadian-born American actor of both the stage and screen. He began his stage career in Montreal, before moving to New York City. His short film career spanned both the silent and sound film eras. In addition to his acting, he was also a well-known recording artist, who was very popular during World War I, including at least one song which reached number one on the charts in 1915. His career was cut short when he died in a car crash in 1932.
Memphis Bound is a 1945 American musical based on the Gilbert and Sullivan opera H.M.S. Pinafore. The score was adapted and augmented by Don Walker and Clay Warnick, with a libretto credited to Albert Barker and Sally Benson, "with gratitude to W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan." The original production starred an all-black cast including Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Avon Long, Billy Daniels, Ada Brown, and Sheila Guyse.
Mary Percy Schenck Cosgrove was an American costume designer who won the Tony Award for Best Costume Design in 1948 for her work on Ruth Goetz's The Heiress. Mainly active as a designer during the 1940s, she designed costumes for several successful Broadway plays and for operas with the Metropolitan Opera.
Annamary Dickey, also known as Annamary Dickey Laue, was an American soprano and actress in operas, operettas, musicals, night clubs, and concerts who had an active performance career from the 1930s through the 1960s. She began her career as a regular performer with the Chautauqua Opera and the St. Louis Municipal Opera in the mid to late 1930s. In 1939 she won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air which earned her a contract with the Metropolitan Opera (Met). She was a soprano in mainly secondary roles at the Met from 1939 to 1944; appearing in productions of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, Massenet's Manon, Delibes' Lakmé, Charpentier's Louise, Bizet's Carmen, Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, and Smetana's The Bartered Bride. Her most significant role at the Met was as Musetta in Puccini's La bohème. A strikingly beautiful woman with a passion for fashionable clothes, she gained the moniker the "Glamour Girl of the 'Met'" and headlined a fashion campaign for Saks Fifth Avenue in 1945.
References
- ↑ "Plays Out of Town – Hollywood Pinafore". Variety . Vol. 158, no. 10. May 16, 1945. p. 52.
- ↑ "Mary Percy Schenck". Playbill . Retrieved February 13, 2021.
- ↑ Bradley (2005), p. 170.
- ↑ "History of Lost Musicals", lostmusicals.org, accessed June 1, 2009
Sources
- Bradley, Ian (2005). Oh Joy! Oh Rapture!: The Enduring Phenomenon of Gilbert and Sullivan . Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516700-7 – via Internet Archive.
