The Gondoliers

Sunny, funny and with more ‘tra la las’ per square inch than any other opera in the canon, The Gondoliers is a joy from start to finish.

In a flight of the satirical whimsy so typical of G&S, two happy-go-lucky gondoliers discover that one of them is, in fact, heir to the throne of a distant kingdom. True to their (adopted) Republican roots, they set off together to rule in idealistic, if somewhat chaotic, style...

Originally planned for stages across the country from May to July 2020 in a co-production with D'Oyly Carte Opera & State Opera South Australia, The Gondoliers will return in a fast, furious production by Stuart Maunder, Artistic Director at State Opera South Australia, as soon as restrictions allow.

In the meantime, take a delicious bite of Gilbert and Sullivan’s glorious confection in a specially recorded video of highlights and commentary, featuring four of the singers due to perform in the new production – Sioned Gwen Davies, Ellie Laugharne, Ben McAteer and William Morgan – alongside the production’s Conductor, Scottish Opera Head of Music Derek Clark.

A special thank you to all those supporters who donated to our Play A Supporting Role appeal, helping to create this wonderful production.  We can’t wait to show you how the work has turned out.

Conductor's Introduction

Scottish Opera’s Head of Music Derek Clark reveals his abiding love for Gilbert and Sullivan

The Gondoliers was the first Gilbert and Sullivan operetta I got to know well. My parents took me to a D’Oyly Carte performance when I was about ten, and shortly afterwards my dad acquired a second-hand vocal score from which I tried to play the various songs. (I still have it, and though it’s now quite fragile, I was able to use it for some of the recordings for this project.)

So began a love of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan that continued as I gradually discovered all the operettas, sometimes by seeing them (mainly in amateur productions by the Glasgow Orpheus Club, one of whose members worked in my dad’s office and always got us tickets) and sometimes by acquiring scores as birthday or Christmas presents, and getting to know the music for myself by playing it – always a better way of learning!

Stuart Maunder, our director for The Gondoliers, mentions below discovering Martyn Green’s Treasury of Gilbert and Sullivan as a teenager as a seminal moment in his relationship with these pieces. I too discovered a copy of that book in my local library, at around the same age, and it probably spent more time on my piano than it did on the library shelves! It formed a wonderful introduction, particularly to the music of some of the lesser-known pieces, and the opportunity to see Gilbert’s lyrics and dialogue on the written page helped me to appreciate the cleverness of his wit and his verbal dexterity.

As a student, I was able to take part in a couple of productions by the Glasgow University Cecilian Society, singing in the chorus (my score of Iolanthe still has copious pencilled instructions about what we were supposed to do on stage). Later, as a repetiteur at Welsh National Opera, I was privileged to help with the musical preparation of recordings of some of the pieces made by Charles Mackerras, whose knowledge of this repertoire was second to none. (I also got to play the celeste in a performance he conducted of his wonderful arrangement of Sullivan’s music for the ballet Pineapple Poll. There wasn’t much to play, but hearing his orchestration ‘from the inside’ was great fun, and seeing his obvious delight in the music made an indelible impression.)

During my time at Scottish Opera, it has been a ‘source of innocent merriment’ to include some Gilbert and Sullivan extracts in our Opera Highlights touring programmes – quite often from the lesser-known pieces – and to see how well they go down with the audiences. And of course more recently it’s been a great joy to have conducted performances of The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado, as well as preparing the chorus for the Edinburgh International Festival performance of HMS Pinafore.

It’s widely held that The Yeomen of the Guard is the most obviously ‘operatic’ piece in the G&S canon, and therefore the one most likely to appeal to those who spend their lives working in opera houses. But while Yeomen contains much wonderful music, the piece I’ve always maintained is most suited to be given the full ‘operatic’ treatment is The Gondoliers. So I was particularly delighted not only when Scottish Opera decided to plan a production, but also when I was asked to conduct it, since it was something that I had always wanted to do. The chance to collaborate with another G&S enthusiast, director Stuart Maunder, would be a lot of fun, and, having seen the designs for sets and costumes created by Dick Bird, I quickly realised that our audiences would enjoy a visual treat as well as (hopefully) a musical one.

We very much hope that we’ll be able to welcome you to a live performance of The Gondoliers soon. For now, though, we can at least present some of the music, together with a little background context. I’m very grateful to the four singers – Ellie Laugharne, Sioned Gwen Davies, William Morgan and Ben McAteer – who not only readily agreed to record, in the middle of lockdown, portions of the roles they were to sing in our production, but also happily learned extracts from other roles so we could give you a fuller picture of the musical landscape of this lively operetta. Enjoy!

Synopsis

Act I

In Venice, 24 farm girls declare their passions for the handsome gondolier brothers Marco and Giuseppe Palmieri, who blindfold themselves in order to choose their brides fairly. Eventually, Giuseppe picks Tessa, and Marco picks Gianetta, and all four head to church for a double wedding.

The Duke and Duchess of Plaza Toro, along with their daughter Casilda, arrive from Spain to meet with Don Alhambra del Bolero, the Grand Inquisitor. While their drummer Luiz departs to announce the Duke’s arrival, the Duke and Duchess reveal to their daughter a secret they have kept for 20 years: when she was just six months old, she was married to the infant son of the King of Barataria, who was spirited away to Venice by the Grand Inquisitor, and is now King himself following his father’s demise in an insurrection. Casilda is therefore now Queen of Barataria, and her parents have brought her to Venice so that she can meet her husband. Secretly in love with Luiz, Casilda resigns herself to a life apart from him.

The Grand Inquisitor arrives, and explains that the baby Prince of Barataria was raised by the Venetian gondolier Baptisto Palmieri, who had a son of a similar age and quickly forgot which was which. The two boys – Marco and Giuseppe Palmieri – grew up to become gondoliers themselves. Only the nurse Inez who looked after them (and who also happens to be Luiz’s mother) knows which is which, but she is now living with a brigand in the mountains. The Grand Inquisitor sends Luiz to find her.

When Marco and Giuseppe arrive with their wives, Don Alhambra explains that one of them is the King of Barataria, but nobody knows which one. Despite their Republican beliefs, the ‘brothers’ are delighted, and agree to travel to Barataria at once, acting together until the real King can be identified. Don Alhambra advises their wives that they cannot be admitted to Barataria until the King has been declared – neglecting to mention that the real King is already married to Casilda.

Act II

In Barataria, Marco and Giuseppe are enjoying splendid lives, but nonetheless miss their wives. Themselves struggling to endure the separation, the ladies soon arrive from Venice, and all celebrate with a grand ball.

Don Alhambra arrives at the palace to discover that Marco and Guiseppe have promoted everyone to the nobility, and breaks the news that the true King was married to Casilda as a baby – and is therefore an inadvertent bigamist. The gondoliers’ wives are distraught to discover that neither of them will be Queen.

The Duke and Duchess of Plaza Toro arrive with Casilda, and, shocked by the lack of pomp and ceremony to welcome them, set about educating Marco and Giuseppe in proper royal behaviour. The two erstwhile gondoliers are left alone with Casilda, who promises to be a loyal wife to one of them, and when their other wives arrive, all five sing of their strange predicament.

Don Alhambra arrives with the nurse Inez who knows the King’s true identity. She confesses that when the Grand Inquisitor arrived to steal the baby Prince away, she substituted her own young son, keeping the true Prince under her own guard. Thus it is neither Marco nor Giuseppe who is King, but Luiz – and Casilda discovers that she is already married to the man she loves. The two gondoliers, though disappointed not to be King, return to Venice happily with their wives.

Programme Note

Gilbert and Sullivan’s sunniest opera marks the most radiant expression of their distinct yet united talents, as well as the high-water mark in their sometimes fractious professional relationship, as Ian Bradley explains

For such a sunny and successful piece, The Gondoliers had a somewhat difficult and protracted gestation. Sir Arthur Sullivan had found his last collaboration with WS Gilbert, The Yeomen of the Guard, much more to his liking than the earlier and lighter Savoy operas, and it had strengthened his resolve to devote himself to grand opera. When Gilbert approached him about working on another comic opera early in 1889, the composer responded:

"You say that in a serious opera you must more or less sacrifice yourself. I say that this is just what I have been doing in all our joint pieces, and, what is more, must continue to do in comic opera to make it successful. Business and syllabic setting assume an importance which, however much they fetter me, cannot be overlooked. I am bound, in the interests of the piece, to give way. Hence the reason of my wishing to do a work where the music is to be the first consideration – where words are to suggest music, not govern it."

Gilbert replied in equally emphatic terms:

"If you are really under the astounding impression that you have been effacing yourself during the last 12 years… there is certainly no modus vivendi to be found that shall be satisfactory to both of those of us. You are an adept in your profession, and I am an adept in mine. If we meet, it is to be as master and master – not master and servant."

A rather fractious correspondence ensued, which gradually became less acerbic, thanks partly to the intervention of Richard D’Oyly Carte, the impresario who had brought Gilbert and Sullivan together. He suggested that Sullivan might work on a grand opera with a different librettist while collaborating on another lighter work with Gilbert.

Venetian inspirations

A holiday in continental Europe, which took in Venice, improved Sullivan’s mood, and when he returned home in April 1889 he responded positively to Gilbert’s suggestion of a Venetian setting for a typically topsy-turvy plot involving Republican-inclined gondoliers finding themselves jointly ruling an island kingdom. Both men spent longer creating The Gondoliers than they had on any of their previous 11 joint works (including Thespis, their first collaboration, back in 1871). Gilbert took the best part of five months to write the libretto, and Sullivan was occupied on the music for the whole of the summer of 1889, which he spent largely at Weybridge in Surrey. He received the songs one or two at a time, and numerous letters passed between composer and librettist about redrafting or dropping particular numbers once the overall structure of the work became clearer.

Despite this comparatively long period of preparation, the run-up to the opening performance was a frantic rush. Sullivan did not have his first orchestral rehearsal until five days before the London first night. After taking the rehearsal, he dined at home and then worked until three the following morning composing the Overture. He was up again after only a few hours’ sleep to agree with Gilbert the title of the piece – which had, characteristically, been left to the last minute. Two days later, the dress rehearsal lasted for a marathon seven hours.

The Gondoliers opened at the Savoy Theatre on the Strand on 7 December 1889, and ran for 559 performances until 20 June 1891. The critics were almost unanimous in their praise, with the Daily Telegraph applauding ‘the all-pervading character of brightness and unaffected delight’ and noting: ‘The Gondoliers conveys an impression of having been written con amore. It is as spontaneous as the light-hearted laughter of the sunny South and as luminous as an Italian summer sky.’

The public’s reaction was equally ecstatic. When Chappell’s published the vocal score, 12 men were employed packing it from morning till night, and on the first day alone, 20,000 copies were dispatched in 11 wagonloads. One evening, Sullivan was watching a performance from the back of the dress circle and found himself humming the melody of one of the songs. An elderly gentleman standing next to him said angrily, ‘Look here, sir, I paid my money to hear Sullivan’s music – not yours.’

In the United States the reception was markedly cooler, and its lack of success of the box office earned the opera the nickname The Gone Dollars. This contrasting appeal on either side of the Atlantic has continued ever since. Though in Britain The Gondoliers has always been in the top four Savoy operas in terms of popularity (alongside The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance and HMS Pinafore), in the United States it has never attained this status, perhaps because it is the least English of Gilbert and Sullivan’s works, and therefore not as appealing to the Anglophile sentiments of their North American fans.

Short-lived unity

Nevertheless, the opera’s success in Britain inspired from both composer and librettist rare but heartfelt tributes to each other’s talents. Sadly, this relatively unusual state of librettist and composer acting, like Marco and Giuseppe Palmieri, ‘in perfect unity’ was to be short-lived. Shortly after the opening of The Gondoliers, Gilbert set off on a cruise to India with his wife. When he returned home, he was appalled to discover that £4,500 of the partners’ money had been spent on preliminary expenses for the opera, including a sum of £500 for new carpets for the Savoy Theatre. He exploded at D’Oyly Carte, who responded by saying: ‘Very well, then – you write no more for the Savoy Theatre.’

The ‘carpet quarrel’ soured relations between librettist and composer for the next two years. Both went their separate ways and found new collaborators. Sullivan at last fulfilled his desire to be a composer of grand opera, writing a work based on Sir Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe that on 31 January 1891 was the opening production at the brand new Royal English Opera House (now the Palace Theatre in London’s Cambridge Circus), which Carte had built as the home for what he hoped would be a new English school of grand opera. Gilbert collaborated with composer Alfred Cellier on The Mountebanks, about a magic potion that causes those who have taken it to become what they have pretended to be, which opened at the Lyric Theatre on 4 January 1892.

Although Gilbert and Sullivan did bury the hatchet and come together again for Utopia, Limited in 1893 and The Grand Duke in 1896, neither work achieved the success of their earlier collaborations. In many ways, The Gondoliers marks the culmination and high-water mark of their work together, and stands as the supreme expression of their distinct yet united talents. Gilbert’s libretto manages to pack a considerable satirical punch without being either heavy-handed or overtly silly. It also allowed Sullivan to achieve his object of making his music more dominant than it had been in their earlier works. The Gondoliers has the longest vocal score of any of the Savoy operas, including the three-act Princess Ida.

What to listen out for

Lengthy opening sequence: The chorus ‘List and learn’ begins a sequence of music that continues, uninterrupted by dialogue, for more than 18 minutes. It is the longest opening sequence, and very nearly the longest continuous passage of music, in any of the Savoy operas, being beaten only by the Act I finale of Iolanthe. Sullivan revels in the Venetian setting to produce a non-stop sequence of gorgeous melodies. There is a distinctly Italian feel to the whole sequence, with more than an echo of Rossini.

Similarity with well-known tunes…: Sullivan was sometimes accused of borrowing rather heavily from existing tunes. Several critics detected a strong resemblance between the opening bars of Tessa’s Act I aria ‘When a merry maiden marries’ and the refrain ‘Just a song at twilight’ from the popular parlour ballad ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’, composed by James Molloy. When this was put to him, Sullivan retorted, ‘I do not happen to have heard the song, but even if I had, you must remember that Molloy and I had only seven notes on which to work between us.’

… and quotations of familiar tunes: Another favourite device of Sullivan is the insertion of snatches of well-known folk or national airs in the middle of his more comic songs. Don Alhambra’s Act II aria, ‘There lived a king’, provides good examples of this in the scoring that accompanies Marco and Giuseppe’s reprises of the lines in the middle of each verse. ‘With toddy, must be content with toddy’ has an accompaniment that suggests the droning of bagpipes at the start of a reel, in a nod to the Scottish associations of the whisky-based drink. The singing of ‘With admirals around their wide dominions’ is scored with a snatch of hornpipe. Sullivan originally provided an accompaniment to the line ‘Of shoddy, up goes the price of shoddy’ that quoted a few bars of ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’. According to Courtice Pounds, the tenor who created the role of Marco, this was inserted to show what the composer thought of American pirate versions of the Savoy operas. However, on hearing it at a rehearsal, Sullivan’s American lover, Fanny Ronalds, apparently protested that it might offend her compatriots, and Sullivan promptly removed this particular musical joke.

Act I finale: The sunny atmosphere spreads across the Act I finale, which is unusual in a Savoy opera in not involving a dramatic confrontation or revelation. Its most exuberant number, the quartet ‘Then one of us will be a Queen’, had Queen Victoria enthusiastically tapping her feet during a command performance at Windsor Castle in 1891. Sullivan revelled in capturing the emotional aspects of the impending separation of the newly-wed gondoliers from their wives, and scoring what is essentially a protracted farewell with elements of both rejoicing and regret. The barcarole-like final chorus, ‘Then away we go to an island fair’ – based on the rowing rhythm of traditional Venetian boat songs – is as lilting and sensuous as anything Sullivan wrote, and perfectly conjures up the enchanted atmosphere of a Mediterranean seascape.

Setting different vocal themes against each other: Running two very different musical themes against each other is often seen as one of Sullivan’s trademarks. He famously does it in the double choruses in The Pirates of Penzance and The Yeomen of the Guard, while in the trio ‘To sit in solemn silence’ in The Mikado he has three different themes running concurrently. In a letter to a friend about his use of this technique, he wrote: ‘The most ingenious bit of work (certainly the most difficult) is the quartet in The Gondoliers, “In a contemplative fashion”.’ It is certainly one of his most complex and carefully constructed ensembles, with the characters basically sustaining a slow, quiet melody but periodically interrupting its flow with rapid and angry solo outbursts, and reaching a powerful climax of clashing confusion before a calm return to the basic opening melody with the conclusion ‘Quiet calm deliberation disentangles every knot’. Both composer and librettist laboured over this more than over any other number in the opera, with Gilbert having to produce several drafts to satisfy Sullivan. It has been likened to Haydn’s humorous serenade Maiden Fair, O Deign to Tell, although the predominant influence is surely Italian, with echoes of Donizetti and Rossini once again.

Ian Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Cultural and Spiritual History at the University of St Andrews, and author of The Complete Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan
(Oxford University Press).

Biographies

Derek Clark – Writer/Presenter/Pianist

Derek Clark was born in Glasgow and studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Durham University and London Opera Centre. He joined Welsh National Opera’s music staff in 1977 as a repetiteur and staff conductor, and joined Scottish Opera as Head of Music in 1997.

Scottish Opera appearances: Samson, The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, Così fan tutte, The Barber of Seville, The Italian Girl in Algiers, The Elixir of Love, Fidelio, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La traviata, Macbeth, Falstaff, Orpheus in the Underworld, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, Carmen, Manon, La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Eugene Onegin, Hansel and Gretel, The Burning Fiery Furnace, Inés de Castro, Five:15 (2008-10), The Lady from the Sea by Craig Armstrong – world premiere, Clemency by Sir James MacMillan – Scottish premiere, The Trial by Philip Glass – Scottish premiere. He also appeared with Jamie MacDougall in Lauder, and has devised 23 Opera Highlights/Essential Scottish Opera programmes. He provided reduced orchestrations for small-scale tours of Hansel and Gretel, La Cenerentola, Die Fledermaus, Rodelinda and L’elisir d’amore, and the musical reworkings for the highly successful annual Pop-up Opera tours.

Besides his work as accompanist, coach, arranger and composer, he has assisted Sir Roger Norrington and Richard Egarr at the Edinburgh International Festival and is Musical Director of the Dundee Choral Union.

Sioned Gwen Davies – Mezzo-soprano

Born in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, Sioned Gwen Davies studied at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama and National Opera Studio. She represented Wales at the 2017 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. Among her awards, she won first prize at the 2009 Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, and first prize at the 2009 National Eisteddfod of Wales. She was a Scottish Opera Emerging Artist in 2013/14.

Scottish Opera appearances: Kate The Pirates of Penzance, Opera Highlights 2015, Eduige Rodelinda, Lady in Waiting/Second Witch Macbeth, Marta Iolanta, Third Dryad Rusalka, Pitti-Sing The Mikado, Stewardess Flight, Olga Eugene Onegin, Maddalena Rigoletto, Third Lady The Magic Flute, Second Secretary to Mao Nixon in China.

Operatic engagements include: Tisbe La Cenerentola (West Green House Opera); Pitti-Sing (English National Opera); Margarida The Yellow Sofa by Julian Philips (Glyndebourne); Olga (Valladolid Opera); Second Lady The Magic Flute (Longborough Festival Opera)

Ellie Laugharne – Soprano

Soprano Ellie Laugharne studied at Birmingham University, the Birmingham Conservatoire and London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She has been a Jerwood Young Artist at Glyndebourne and an Associate Artist at Opera North, and she is also a Samling Artist and an Associate Artist with Classical Opera.

Scottish Opera appearances: Mabel The Pirates of Penzance, Frasquita Carmen, Adina L’elisir d’amore.

Operatic engagements include: Susanna The Marriage of Figaro, Lucia The Rape of Lucretia (Glyndebourne on Tour); Susanna (The Grange Festival); Phyllis Iolanthe, Barbarina The Marriage of Figaro, Cupid Orpheus in the Underworld, Frasquita (English National Opera); Governess The Turn of the Screw, Tina Flight, Zerlina Don Giovanni (Opera Holland Park); Despina Così fan tutte, Gretel Hansel and Gretel, Susanna (Opera North); Sandrina La finta giardiniera, Edna Tobias and the Angel (Buxton Festival).

Ben McAteer – Baritone

Born in Northern Ireland, baritone Ben McAteer studied at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and National Opera Studio.

Scottish Opera appearances: Guglielmo Così fan tutte, Figaro The Marriage of Figaro, James The Devil Inside, Pish-Tush The Mikado.

Operatic engagements include: Falke Die Fledermaus, Goryanchikov From the House of the Dead (Welsh National Opera); Papageno The Magic Flute, Eisenstein Die Fledermaus, Marullo Rigoletto (Northern Ireland Opera); Sharpless Madama Butterfly (Opera Holland Park); Marcello La bohème (Lyric Opera Ireland); Earl of Mountararat Iolanthe (English National Opera); Count Almaviva The Marriage of Figaro (Irish National Opera); Father Hansel and Gretel (Irish National Opera, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre).

William Morgan – Tenor

British tenor William Morgan studied at London’s Royal College of Music and National Opera Studio, and is an English National Opera Harewood Artist.

Scottish Opera appearances: Tamino The Magic Flute, Misael The Burning Fiery Furnace, Opera Highlights Autumn 2017 and Spring 2018, The 8th Door.

Operatic engagements include: Tom Rakewell The Rake’s Progress (Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra); Writer Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel by Iain Bell – world premiere, First Priest The Mask of Orpheus, Reporter Orphée by Philip Glass, Younger Man Between Worlds by Tansy Davies – world premiere, Peter Quint The Turn of the Screw, Hot Biscuit Slim Paul Bunyan, Phaeton The Day After by Jonathan Dove (English National Opera); Don Ottavio Don Giovanni, Anthony Hope Sweeney Todd (Longborough Festival Opera); Falstaff (Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra); Pastore/Spirito L’Orfeo (Bavarian State Opera); Spoletta Tosca (Nevill Holt Opera); Cervantes The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief by Johann Strauss II (Opera della Luna); Hippolyte et Aricie (Glyndebourne); Antonio Das Liebesverbot (Chelsea Opera).