7 December: The Gondoliers

7 December 1889 saw the first performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers at the Savoy Theatre in London. 10 things you might not know:

1. The full title is The Gondoliers, or The King Of Barataria.
2. It was the last hugely successful Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The two of them, and D’Oyly Carte, fell out over who was to pay for a theatre carpet soon after that.
3. Although Sullivan was already fed up with writing light operettas and had threatened to leave so he could write serious music. D’Oyly Carte persuaded him to stay by telling him he could write a serious Opera (Ivanhoe) as well as the operettas.
4. Sullivan travelled to Venice to soak up the atmosphere and get inspiration for the music.
5. It opens with the longest continuous stretch of Music in any Gilbert and Sullivan operetta – 20 minutes of music and dancing before there is any dialogue.
6. The plot. Potential spoiler alert if you’ve not seen it. It’s about two Venetian gondoliers called Marco and Guiseppe, who discover that one of them is actually the son of the late King of Barataria – but they don’t know which. The King left his baby son with a gondolier during a revolution but the gondolier, who liked a drink or three, could never work out which was his own son and which was the prince. It is decided that until they can work out which of the two is the King they will resign from plying gondolas and reign jointly (No DNA tests in those days). To do so they must leave behind their new wives, Gianetta and Tessa, who soon work out this means one of them is going to be Queen. The Duke and Duchess of Plaza-Toro arrive with their daughter Casilda and their servant, Luiz. The Duchess informs Casilda that she was married off to the prince when she was six months old and is the rightful queen. Since she is in love with the servant, Luiz, she’s not happy about that, at all.
7. Act two sees them at the royal court, having elevated everyone to the nobility and doing the work of the servants themselves. The Duke and his entourage and Gianetta and Tessa arrive. By now the Grand Inquisitor has tracked down the prince’s foster mother, who he believes will be able to tell which is the king. She confesses that neither of the gondoliers is the rightful heir to the throne at all, but rather Luiz, the duke’s servant. She had kept him hidden and given her own son to the drunken gondolier. Casilda, therefore, is already married to the man she loves and neither of the gondoliers is a bigamist. They return to Venice with their wives and live happily ever after.
8. The Gondoliers ran for 554 consecutive performances (which made it the fifth longest running musical at the time) and a Command Performance before Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle in March, 1891. The entire company and orchestra travelled there on a special train. It was the first Gilbert and Sullivan opera to be honoured in this way, and the first time Queen Victoria had invited any theatrical entertainment into her home since Prince Albert had died thirty years earlier.
9. Themes of the story include class distinctions, and also stock companies, since the Duke declares that he has made himself a stock company. Gilbert was fascinated with the politics around the 1884 Stock Company Act, which he went on to explore further in his next opera, Utopia Limited. The fact that the story was set in Venice helped avoid any accusations that Gilbert and Sullivan were having a dig at the British royal family.
10. The Gondoliers received rave reviews in London but did less well in New York, partly because Gilbert himself believed that the cast wasn’t very good. D’Oyly Carte tried to revive the show by re-casting it but the damage was done and it closed after 103 performances. The American press dubbed it “The Gone Dollars”.

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