Artistic partnerships are elusive things. The best – where two creative personalities somehow inspire or goad each other to do better than their individual best – can seem so natural that they’re almost easier to identify by their absence. No one’s queuing up to revive Richard Rodgers’s Rex (lyrics by Sheldon Harnick). Pretending to rate Band on the Run above Revolver is a fun way to wind up boomers, but c’mon – honestly? With Gilbert and Sullivan, meanwhile, recordings have given us the chance to rediscover Grundy and Sullivan’s Haddon Hall and Gilbert and Cellier’s The Mountebanks: turkeys both.
It’s an artistic marriage that stayed together for the kids – or the balance sheet of the Savoy Theatre
Then there’s the sad case of The Grand Duke, and that might be the saddest of all because, while it’s certainly by Gilbert and Sullivan, somehow it isn’t quite Gilbert-and-Sullivan. It was their final collaboration, and they were both pulling their punches where once they’d struck sparks off each other. Gilbert’s once-tight plotting runs away with him; Sullivan glows where previously he’d glittered – and the big comic song is about sausage rolls. It’s an artistic marriage that’s staying together for the sake of the kids – or in this case, the balance sheet of the Savoy Theatre. Gilbert called the result ‘an ugly misshapen little brat’.
Well, it was brat summer at the 30th International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Buxton. There’s a gloriously homespun vibe about the whole festival, from the gift shop (where you can buy a hand-knitted Captain Corcoran) to the fans in Ruddigore T-shirts necking pints outside the Old Club House. Don’t be misled. The festival often showcases G&S productions from around the world, and this one-off revival of The Grand Duke was performed by the Savoy Company of Philadelphia. Overall, the festival presented 11 full-scale productions in the space of two weeks, all without public subsidy. Buxton Opera House now hosts more operas per year than the London Coliseum.
The Grand Duke drew a full house, and the American company went at it with glee and some very plausible English accents. The designs were colourful and, with the exception of an anachronistic framing device (Attlee’s England), director Bill Kiesling handled it without gimmicks. Meanwhile if the principals weren’t professionals, they easily could have been. Stephen Underwood played the actor-manager Ludwig like something out of P.G. Wodehouse, and Greta Groothuis, as the English actress Julia Jellicoe, delivered crystal-bright high notes, while gamely obeying Gilbert’s stipulation that she should perform the whole role in a German accent.
This was probably the most accomplished performance that The Grand Duke has received in the UK this century, and it prompted two reflections. First, the polish, professionalism and sheer joy of this ambitious American company – wholly uninhibited by British snobbery about G&S – was notable. Second, that The Grand Duke really has had a bum rap. Played with a decent-sized orchestra, as it was here (Peter A. Hilliard conducted), Sullivan’s score is a lyrical, luminous thing; a last blossoming of the Mendelssohn spirit in the era of Richard Strauss, with Julia’s gavotte-song ‘How Would I Play This Part?’ providing an irresistible earworm. By the standards of most European operetta in the 1890s, The Grand Duke is a gem. By the standards of the team who created The Mikado, not so much. The best is the enemy of the good.
At Holland Park, Charles Court Opera gave us the best. John Savournin directed The Yeomen of the Guard, and he set it in the Tower of London in the 16th century. A bold move; it might even catch on. Savournin’s only major addition (apart from opening out some traditional cuts) was the appearance during the overture of W.S. Gilbert, complete with top hat and mutton-chop whiskers – conjuring his creations from the page and watching with satisfaction as they sprang to life. It was a touching, tactful homage – an early sign that (as in Buxton) everything we were about to see came from a place of genuine love.
The Grand Duke really has had a bum rap. Played with a decent-sized orchestra, Sullivan’s score is luminous
The Yeomen of the Guard, after all, is the darkest and subtlest of the Savoy canon. Savournin understands that it needs to be allowed to speak on its own terms, and to be peopled by vibrant, just-about-believable characters for whom even the topsy-turviest situations are very real indeed. That’s harder than it sounds but the Charles Court company pulled it off, with Matthew Kellett as an acrobatic likely lad of a Jack Point, Savournin (a bona-fide triple threat) as a great gormless spider of a Shadbolt and Llio Evans as a troubled Elsie. Indisposed on the first night, she walked the part while Ellie Laugharne provided a wonderfully poignant voice from the pit.
It was fresh, it was funny, and when it needed to, it stabbed straight at the heart. These Charles Court co-productions have been an inspired addition to Opera Holland Park’s summer seasons, and this Yeomen was the finest yet.
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