|
William S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas. The most famous of these include ''H.M.S. Pinafore'', ''The Pirates of Penzance'' and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, ''The Mikado''. The popularity of these works was supported for over a century by year-round performances of them, in Britain and abroad, by the repertory company that Gilbert, Sullivan and their producer Richard D'Oyly Carte founded, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. These Savoy operas are still frequently performed in the English-speaking world and beyond. Gilbert's creative output included over 75 plays and libretti, and numerous short stories, poems and lyrics, both comic and serious. After brief careers as a government clerk and a lawyer, Gilbert began to focus, in the 1860s, on writing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Reed Entertainments
The German Reed Entertainments were founded in 1855 and operated by Thomas German Reed (1817–1888) together with his wife, Priscilla German Reed (née Horton) (1818–1895). At a time when the theatre in London was seen as a disreputable place, the German Reed family provided family-friendly entertainments for forty years, showing that respectable theatre could be popular. The entertainments were held at the intimate Royal Gallery of Illustration, Lower Regent Street, and later at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, in London. Thomas and Priscilla German Reed usually appeared in them, together with a small group of players. They engaged talented newcomers, such as Frederic Clay, W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Law, as well as established writers such as F. C. Burnand, to create many of the entertainments. Thomas German Reed composed the music for many of the entertainments himself. The German Reed theatrical revolution This form of entertainment consisted of musical p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre, theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals. Although music has been a part of dramatic presentations since ancient times, modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century, with many structural elements established by the light opera works of Jacques Offenbach in France, Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and the works of Edward Harrigan, Harrigan and Tony Hart (theater), Hart in America. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as ''Man and Superman'' (1902), ''Pygmalion (play), Pygmalion'' (1913) and ''Saint Joan (play), Saint Joan'' (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Dublin, in 1876 Shaw moved to London, where he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, and embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the Gradualism (politics), gradualist Fabian Society and became its most prominent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwrights in London in the early 1890s. Regarded by most commentators as the greatest playwright of the Victorian era, Wilde is best known for his 1890 Gothic fiction, Gothic philosophical fiction ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'', as well as his numerous epigrams and plays, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts. Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Literae Humaniores#Greats, Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and Jo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knight Bachelor
The title of Knight Bachelor is the basic rank granted to a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not inducted as a member of one of the organised Order of chivalry, orders of chivalry; it is a part of the Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom, British honours system. Knights Bachelor are the most ancient sort of British knight (the rank existed during the 13th-century reign of Henry III of England, King Henry III), but Knights Bachelor rank below knights of chivalric orders. A man who is knighted is formally addressed as "Sir [First Name] [Surname]" or "Sir [First Name]" and his wife as "Lady [Surname]". The designation "Bachelor" in this context conveys the concept of "junior in rank". Criteria Knighthood is usually conferred for public service; amongst its recipients are all male judges of His Majesty's High Court of Justice in England. It is possible to be a Knight Bachelor and a junior member of an order of chivalry without being a knight of that or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grim's Dyke
Grim's Dyke (sometimes called Graeme's Dyke until late 1891)How, Harry ''The Strand Magazine'', Vol. 2, October 1891, pp. 330–41, reprinted at ''The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive'', 20 November 2011 is a house and estate in Harrow Weald, in northwest London, England. The house was built from 1870 to 1872 by Richard Norman Shaw for painter Frederick Goodall and named after the nearby prehistoric earthwork known as Grim's Ditch (Harrow), Grim's Ditch. It was converted into a hotel, Grim's Dyke Hotel, in 1970. The house is best known as the home of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, of the opera partnership Gilbert and Sullivan, who lived and farmed there for the last two decades of his life. He died while attempting to save a girl from drowning in his lake. Lady Gilbert and the Gilberts' ward, Nancy McIntosh, lived there until her death in 1936. The statue of Charles II of England, Charles II now found in Soho Square stood on the property from about 1880 to 1938. The house was then u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nancy McIntosh
Nancy Isobel McIntosh (25 October 1866 – February 20, 1954) was an American-born singer and actress who performed mostly on the London stage. Her father was a member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which had been blamed in connection with the 1889 Johnstown Flood that resulted in the loss of over 2,200 lives in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. McIntosh is perhaps best known for creating the role of Princess Zara in Gilbert and Sullivan's ''Utopia, Limited'' in 1893. She obtained this role after beginning a concert singing career in America in 1887, moving to London in 1890 and continuing her concert career in Britain. She became one of the last of W. S. Gilbert's actress protégées and continued her acting and singing career in Britain and America for several years. After McIntosh retired from the stage, she lived with Gilbert and his wife until Lady Gilbert's death in 1936 and eventually inherited Gilbert's estate, helping to preserve his legacy by selling his papers to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Gondoliers
''The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria'' is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for a very successful 554 performances (at that time the fifth longest-running piece of musical theatre in history), closing on 30 June 1891. This was the twelfth comic opera collaboration of fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan. The story of the opera concerns brothers Marco and Giuseppe Palmieri, a pair of Venetian gondoliers who are told that one of them is heir to the throne of the fictional kingdom of Barataria; until it can be discovered by the Grand Inquisitor which of them is the heir, they must rule jointly. Unbeknownst to the brothers, who have just married Venetian farm girls, the heir was wed in infancy to the daughter of the Spanish Duke of Plaza-Toro, who is herself in love with her father's servant. A subplot concerns the impoverished Duke attempting to improve his finances ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Yeomen Of The Guard
''The Yeomen of the Guard; or, The Merryman and His Maid'', is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 3 October 1888 and ran for 423 performances. This was the eleventh collaboration of fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan. The opera is set in the Tower of London during the 16th century, and is the darkest, and perhaps most emotionally engaging, of the Savoy Operas, ending with a broken-hearted main character and two very reluctant engagements, rather than the usual numerous marriages. The libretto does contain considerable humour, including a lot of pun-laden one-liners, but Gilbert's trademark satire and topsy-turvy plot complications are subdued in comparison with the other Gilbert and Sullivan operas. The dialogue, though in prose, is quasi-Shakespearean, or early modern English, in style. Critics considered the score to be Sullivan's finest, including its overture, which is in sonata form, rather ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iolanthe
''Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri'' () is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, first performed in 1882. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh of fourteen operatic collaborations by Gilbert and Sullivan. In the opera, the fairy Iolanthe has been banished from fairyland because she married a mortal; this is forbidden by fairy law. Her son, Strephon, is an Arcadia (utopia), Arcadian shepherd who wants to marry Phyllis, a Ward (law), Ward of Court of Chancery, Chancery. All the members of the House of Lords, House of Peers also want to marry Phyllis. When Phyllis sees Strephon hugging a young woman (not knowing that it is his mother – immortal fairies all appear young), she assumes the worst and sets off a climactic confrontation between the peers and the fairies. The opera satire, satirises many aspects of British government, law and society. The confrontation between the fairies and the peers is a version of one of Gilbert's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patience (opera)
''Patience; or, Bunthorne's Bride'', is a comic opera in two acts with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera is a satire on the Aestheticism, aesthetic movement of the 1870s and '80s in England and, more broadly, on fads, superficiality, vanity, hypocrisy and pretentiousness; it also satirises romantic love, rural simplicity and military bluster. First performed at the Opera Comique, London, on 23 April 1881, ''Patience'' moved to the 1,292-seat Savoy Theatre on 10 October 1881, where it was the first theatrical production in the world to be lit entirely by electric light. Henceforth, the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas would be known as the Savoy Operas, and both fans and performers of Gilbert and Sullivan would come to be known as "Savoyards." ''Patience'' was the sixth operatic collaboration of fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan. It ran for a total of 578 performances, which was seven more than the authors' earlier work, ''H.M.S. Pinafore' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
