13 May: Sir Arthur Sullivan

Today is the birthday of Sir Arthur Sullivan, half of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta team. He was born in 1842. Here are some facts about him:

1. Arthur Sullivan's father was an army bandmaster, who taught Arthur to play every instrument in the band by the time he was eight. He was composing music at that age too – he composed an anthem called By the Waters of Babylon.
2. His first published composition was a religious song called O Israel, when he was thirteen.
3. At fourteen, he was awarded the first Mendelssohn Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music.
4. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music and then at the Conservatory in Leipzig. While there, he composed incidental music to Shakespeare's The Tempest, which was performed in London, at Crystal Palace. Charles Dickens was there and was mightily impressed, which led to overnight fame for Arthur.
5. Between 1862 and 1875, he was commissioned to write music both for the stage and the church. By 1875 he'd come to the attention of Richard D'Oyly Carte, who was producing a show at the Royalty Theatre in London. He had a libretto written by one WS Gilbert who needed somebody to set it to music. Carte suggested Arthur Sullivan. The libretto in question was Trial By Jury. Carte liked the result and could tell the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership had potential – so he contracted both of them to write for him.
6. Sullivan was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1883 for “services rendered to the promotion of the art of music”. He'd just signed a five year agreement to produce comic operas for Carte with Gilbert, but many people in the musical establishment believed that now he was a knight he should give up writing comic operas and concentrate on more serious music. Nevertheless, in spite of some differences of opinion with Gilbert, the pair produced several more successful shows, including the most successful of all, The Mikado, which ran for 672 performances.
7. Sullivan never married, but did have several affairs. The longest lasting affair was with an American woman named Fanny Ronalds. She was three years older than him and had two children. She was separated from her husband but never divorced, which meant she and Arthur had to keep their relationship secret. He got her pregnant twice, but both pregnancies were aborted. When he was 54 he proposed to a woman of 22, but she turned him down.
8. In his spare time, he liked to spend time in France and had a passion for gambling.
9. The Gilbert and Sullivan partnership ended when Gilbert sued Sullivan and Carte over the cost of carpets for the Savoy Theatre. Gilbert believed he shouldn't have to pay anything towards the carpets – that was Carte's responsibility in his opinion. He went off in a huff, vowing never to work with either of them again. Sullivan wrote to Gilbert telling him that the whole affair had made him ill and he hated the fact that their names were now coupled “in hostile antagonism over a few miserable pounds.”
10. During his career he composed 24 operas, 11 full orchestral works, ten choral works and oratorios, two ballets, one song cycle, incidental music to several plays, more than 70 hymns and anthems, over 80 songs and parlour ballads.

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