Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado

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Hello boys and girls!

Today we're going to talk about a subject about which I know very little: the famous D'Oyly Carte operettas of William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan.  You can easily find out tons about these guys by checking out Wikipedia.  The summary for the busy executive: Gilbert wrote the words, and Sullivan supplied the tunes.  Sullivan was a brilliant composer of light melodies, and Gilbert, in my very humble opinion, wrote some of the funniest lyrics I have ever seen or heard anywhere.  I'm writing this in a hurry, as usual, and I'm going to have to clean up this stuff fairly soon, but...

The Mikado, an opera set in an oriental land that looks suspiciously like a cross between the British conception of what China and Japan were like, was a clever satire of: Victorian England.  This is the only G&S opera with which I'm moderately acquainted, and it is the funniest thing!  Of course the jokes are little on the British side of humor, which means that there's a certain amount of reference to speech patterns that are considered funny by allusion, and other jokes that are funny only if you were there, back in the day.  But yet other portions are funny in any time and place.  This was drawn to my attention by my brother Ray:

To sit in solemn silence 

In a dull, dark dock,

In a pestilential prison

With a life long lock,

Awaiting the sensation of

A short, sharp shock,

With a cheap and chippy chopper

On a Big Black Block.

This same operetta features a lovely song, by a character with the improbable name of Yum-Yum, which goes like this:

The sun, whose rays

Are all ablaze

With ever-living glory,

Does not deny

His majesty

He scorns to tell a story!

He don't exclaim,

"I blush for shame,

So kindly be indulgent."

But, fierce and bold,

In fiery gold,

He glories all effulgent!

I mean to rule the earth,

As he the sky

We really know our worth,

The sun and I!

I mean to rule the earth,

As he the sky.

We really know our worth,

The sun and I!

Observe his flame,

That placid dame,

The moon's Celestial Highness;

There's not a trace

Upon her face

Of diffidence or shyness:

She borrows light

That, through the night,

Mankind may all acclaim her!

And, truth to tell,

She lights up well,

So I, for one, don't blame her!

Ah, pray make no mistake,

We are not shy;

We're very wide awake,

The moon and I!
Ah, pray make no mistake,

We are not shy;

We're very wide awake,

The moon and I!

This particular performer (Leslie Garrett) seems not to really understand the brilliant audacity of the lyrics! Valerie Masterson's rendition of the aria, provides a nice contrast, though the sound is a little distorted.  (Ms. Masterson is retired, but still active in music education and appreciation activities.)

In the US, the Pirates of Penzance is probably more popular than The Mikado.  There are several others, all funny.  They should be all exhumed and popularized while the present wave of Monty Python appreciation lasts!

 [Parenthetical note:  I seem to remember that Gilbert and Sullivan were not on the best of terms for the majority of the period of their collaboration.  I can't cite sources, but I believe there were witnesses to this fact.  In particular, I seem to remember that Gilbert delighted in writing lyrics with impossible meters, just to make it difficult for Sullivan to set them to music.  If this was true, then the aria above could very possibly have been an instance.  Though, as it stands, it has a very ethereally beautiful effect, especially with the frequent phrases with flute and clarinet in octaves that flit through the accompaniment like moonbeams, it must be realized that those phrases serve to disguise the fact that the music really strains to accommodate the lyrics.  But what an achievement it is!

Perhaps the mischief had to do with wagers; Mr Gilbert might have wagered that he could write lyrics which Sir Arthur could not set to music, and so forth.  (It was such a time in history; Jules Verne, for instance, based his story of Around the World in Eighty Days on just such a wager.)  So, even in the absence of direct evidence, we could surmise that there was less collaboration than sabotage in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.]

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