Ideal marriage

In all the heavier-duty excitement of Liszt’s anniversary I had failed to register that W.S. Gilbert expired 100 years ago; and, perhaps just as significant, the copyright of the D’Oyly Carte opera company expired 50 years ago. I am old enough to remember the fuss which that moment provoked — the highbrows hoping to kill off the whole dreadful phenomenon there and then; the not so high, including Harold Wilson and Spike Milligan, trying to extend it. The company muddled through to 1982, but finally the Arts Council had had enough, and a lot of well-educated people heaved a sigh of relief that the Savoy Operas had finally passed into history.

They were premature in their heaving. For a few years, the tradition did indeed seem to be down and out. Concerned parties continued to find, more noisily now, politically unacceptable examples in Gilbert’s librettos of jingoistic behaviour, racial stereotyping and the degrading of women and gays. Of course, if everything Gilbert wrote were taken seriously there would be no end to how incorrect he was, but by the mid-Eighties post-colonial angst was waning and the Savoy canon was offered some respite by people who argued that the bad things in Gilbert were of such a puerile kind that no one could take them seriously. In John Pemble’s wonderful phrase: ‘Gilbert, like his characters, was found to inhabit a pre-genital universe somewhere between fairyland and nightmare.’

Since then the English-speaking world has gone mad for G and S. Whether it has been serious artists letting their hair down or amateur dramatic societies having a good time, there has been no shortage of productions of almost all of their collaborations. From Jonathan Miller and Ken Russell in the theatre, to Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy on the big screen, the interest has held up beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.