The Sapphire Necklace, or the False Heiress (completed by 1867, and at least mostly completed by 1864), [1] was the first opera composed by Arthur Sullivan. It was never performed, and most of the music and libretto are now lost.
The Sapphire Necklace, or the False Heiress (completed by 1867, and at least mostly completed by 1864), [1] was the first opera composed by Arthur Sullivan. It was never performed, and most of the music and libretto are now lost.
After his incidental music to The Tempest brought Arthur Sullivan early fame in 1862, [2] he began to experiment with a wide variety of musical compositions. By 1864, the young Sullivan had written a ballet ( L'Île Enchantée ), orchestral pieces including The Masque at Kenilworth , several hymns, a few piano solos, and some part songs and parlour ballads. [3]
He had also set to work on The Sapphire Necklace. As with some of his other compositions in the 1860s, the libretto was provided by his friend Henry F. Chorley. However, this libretto proved particularly difficult to set. Later in life Sullivan would say that no other libretto had given him more difficulty, and an 1879 article suggests that he later decided to suppress the opera due to dissatisfaction with the libretto. [4] Sullivan worked diligently at the four-act opera during 1863 and 1864, and in October 1865 the house journal of publisher Cramer & Co. advertised "A Grand Romantic Opera by A. S. Sullivan" as "ready", by contrast with operas by Balfe and Wallace described merely as "in preparation". [5]
The Sapphire Necklace was intended to be produced by the Pyne & Harrison Opera Company, [4] which specialised in such romantic English operas. [6] However, the 1864–65 Pyne and Harrison season at Covent Garden proved to be the company's last, and so they never produced the opera. [7] Sullivan found no one willing to produce The Sapphire Necklace, though the overture and selections from it were performed at The Crystal Palace and elsewhere. [8]
On 13 April 1867, a selection of songs from the opera were performed at The Crystal Palace, arranged for military band by Charles Godfrey Jr. The overture proved popular and went on to appear in numerous further concerts. [9] Like many of Sullivan's early pieces, the overture is in the style of Mendelssohn and shows that The Sapphire Necklace was a more serious work than the comic operas for which Sullivan later became famous.
The two other songs, "Over the Roof" and a now-lost recitative and prayer, "Then come not yet," were less successful. Only the former went as far as publication, and neither would appear again at a major concert in Sullivan's lifetime. The madrigal, "When Love and Beauty to Be Married Go", was saved by the Victorian love of parlour ballads, but the rest of the score other than these two songs, as well as the libretto, was lost. Sullivan sold the score to Metzler in 1878, but bought it back again in 1880. He evidently made an effort to revise the score under a new title, The False Heiress. He also mentioned, in an 1897 letter to his secretary, Wilfred Bendall, having part of the score in front of him when composing Victoria and Merrie England . [10]
In 2000, an amateur performance of the surviving music and lyrics from the opera was given, with a new libretto by Scott Farrell, in Rockford, Illinois. [11] [12]
(With Sullivan's repeats eliminated)
In a 2022 review for MusicWeb International, Nick Barnard wrote: "Both [the 1992] version and the [2022] recording orchestrated by Robin Gordon-Powell appear to have been based on the same surviving military band arrangement made by Charles Godfrey Jr. Because of the presence of two different orchestrators the work is essentially the same-but-different across the two recordings. Penny is a few seconds longer than Andrews but again both conductors are well in tune with the style and idiom and both performances are effective and well played. [T]here are tantalising hints in some of the melodic shapes, and the overture’s final grand peroration, of the musical path Sullivan would be taking in the years ahead." [14]
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.
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan was an English composer. He is best known for 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. His works include 24 operas, 11 major orchestral works, ten choral works and oratorios, two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous church pieces, songs, and piano and chamber pieces. His hymns and songs include "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "The Lost Chord".
Ruddigore; or, The Witch's Curse, originally called Ruddygore, is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy Operas and the tenth of fourteen comic operas written together by Gilbert and Sullivan. It was first performed by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company at the Savoy Theatre in London on 22 January 1887.
Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old, is an operatic extravaganza that was the first collaboration between dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan. No musical score of Thespis was ever published, and most of the music has been lost. Gilbert and Sullivan went on to become the most famous and successful artistic partnership in Victorian England, creating a string of enduring comic opera hits, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado.
Sir Julius Benedict was a German-born composer and conductor, resident in England for most of his career.
Sir Frederic Hymen Cowen, was an English composer, conductor and pianist.
Alfred Cellier was an English composer, orchestrator and conductor.
August Wilhelm Julius Rietz was a German composer, conductor, cellist, and teacher. His students included Woldemar Bargiel, Salomon Jadassohn, Arthur O'Leary, and Sir Arthur Sullivan. He also edited many works by Felix Mendelssohn for publication.
The Mountebanks is a comic opera in two acts with music by Alfred Cellier and Ivan Caryll and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The story concerns a magic potion that causes the person to whom it is administered to become what he or she has pretended to be. It is similar to several "magic lozenge" plots that Gilbert had proposed to the composer Arthur Sullivan, but that Sullivan had rejected, earlier in their careers. To set his libretto to music, Gilbert turned to Cellier, who had previously been a musical director for Gilbert and Sullivan and had since become a successful composer. During the composition of the piece Cellier died, and the score was finished by the original production's musical director, Ivan Caryll, who became a successful composer of Edwardian Musical Comedy.
The Overture di Ballo is a concert overture by Arthur Sullivan. Its first performance was in August 1870 at the Birmingham Triennial Festival, conducted by the composer. It predates all his work with W. S. Gilbert, and is his most frequently recorded concert work for orchestra.
The Overture in C, "In Memoriam", by Arthur Sullivan, premiered on 30 October 1866 at the Norwich Festival, in honour of his father, who died just before composition began.
Kenilworth, A Masque of the Days of Queen Elizabeth, is a cantata with music by Arthur Sullivan and words by Henry Fothergill Chorley that premiered at the Birmingham Festival on 8 September 1864.
Wilhelm Meyer Lutz was a German-born British composer and conductor who is best known for light music, musical theatre and burlesques of well-known works.
The Martyr of Antioch is a choral work described as a "Sacred Musical Drama" by the English composer Arthur Sullivan. It was first performed on 15 October 1880 at the triennial Leeds Music Festival, having been composed specifically for that event. Sullivan was musical director of the Leeds festival in 1880 and conducted the performance.
The Tempest incidental music, Op. 1, is a set of movements for Shakespeare's play composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1861 and expanded in 1862. This was Sullivan's first major composition, and its success quickly brought him to the attention of the musical establishment in England.
The Symphony in E, first performed on March 10, 1866, was the only symphony composed by Arthur Sullivan. Since Sullivan's death, it has frequently been called the "Irish" Symphony as it was composed in Ireland, and as a homage to Mendelssohn's "Scottish Symphony".
L'Île Enchantée is an 1864 ballet by Arthur Sullivan written as a divertissement at the end of Vincenzo Bellini's La Sonnambula at Covent Garden. It was choreographed by H. Desplaces.
The Prodigal Son is an oratorio by Arthur Sullivan with text taken from the parable of the same name in the Gospel of Luke. It features chorus with soprano, contralto, tenor and bass solos. It premiered in Worcester Cathedral on 10 September 1869 as part of the Three Choirs Festival.
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.
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