Gilbert And Sullivan A Biography

The operas of William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan are an institution. Hesketh Pearson’s biography is of the two men who had individual, quite different, personalities – and their equally famous quarrel. Pearson describes their lives rather than criticise their works.

The author of The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, H.M.S. Pinafore and the other great Savoy libretti, W.S. Gilbert was witty, caustic and disrespectful, one of the celebrities of the late Victorian era. He wrote the most brilliantly inventive plays of his time, and with Arthur Sullivan he wrote comic operas that defined the age. He became richer and more famous than he could have imagined, but at the price of his artistic freedom. In his time Gilbert had been many things: journalist, theatre critic, cartoonist, comic poet, stage director, writer of short stories, dramatist. Andrew Crowther examines W.S. Gilbert from all these angles, using a wealth of sources to tell the story of an angry and quarrelsome man, discontented with himself and the age he lived in, raging at life's absurdities and laughing at them. In this book Gilbert's glorious, contradictory character is explored and brought vividly to life.

Illustrated with biographical as well as professional detail, this text suggests that Gilbert and Sullivan's creative partnership was fuelled by their ongoing personality clash, as each partner challenged the other to produce his best work.

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) was the most brilliant dramatist of Victorian England. A daring and cynical playwright, the forerunner of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, he was also a prolific journalist and humorous poet (his Bab Ballads are still widely read), and he achieved worldwide fame through his long collaboration with the composer Arthur Sullivan, a collaboration that created such classics as H. M. S. Pinafore, The Mikado, and all the other Savoy operas. Now the story of this remarkable writer's life - and of his stormy relationship with Sullivan - is here chronicled by a renowned authority on Gilbert and on the theatrical and literary scene in Victorian London. For this biography, Jane W. Stedman has returned to original sources, has interviewed survivors, and has scoured a whole variety of Victorian periodicals for reviews, and personal comment. Gilbert emerges as a much more complex and interesting figure than has previously been thought. The book is a worthy companion piece to Arthur Jacobs's recent biography Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician.

Most books written on Gilbert and Sullivan have focused on the authors rather than on their work. Examining all 14 operas in detail, this book offers a fresh look at the works themselves.

An examination of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas, and how parody was used in the culture wars of late-nineteenth-century England.

No musical partnership has enjoyed greater success during its time span than that of Gilbert and Sullivan in the later 19th century. No fewer than a dozen Savoy operas are still regularly performed. The operas present audiences with splendidly rich and satirical evocations of Victorian England and its society: the prime subject matter of this book!