Скачать или смотреть “The Mikado” (1885) by Arthur Sullivan and Hamilton Clarke

THE GILBERT AND SULLIVAN PIANO OVERTURES PROJECT
This started as my Plague Project and as I suspected has taken longer. Get it right, says I. Or close to right. There are two posts left in the project. One is an ‘bonus track(s)’ and the other is the final overture which if you’ve been keeping score you can figure out. I knew “Iolanthe” would go first because it’s my favorite one (and show of theirs) and which would go last because it’s their most extraordinary overture.

And also as always it’s best listened to on something other than a phone speaker which flattens out dynamics.
I hope you enjoy it.

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The first thing to say is the obvious one. “The Mikado” has been their most popular show by orders of a gazillion magnitudes. I’m sure a lot of you have been in it. If you combine the popularity of all the others combined, including “Pinafore” they still won’t equal that of “The Mikado”. It is simply South Pacific” of Gilbert and Sullivan. The show with more recognizable tunes than any others-not by musicologists but whistlers in the bathtub.

I’m going to be fairly brief (for me) on this because it’s so ingrained, justly, in so many of our heads that I think it really speaks for itself. The telling of the story in the movie “Topsy-Turvy” is pretty damn accurate. My biggest problem with the film is one element of the portrayal of the D’Oyly Carte company. No, they’re not really singers but I’m good with that-it’s Mike Leigh’s rep company of fabulous actors and that’s not the story he’s telling. It’s all the flop-sweat. Of course they’re nervous but they are also in this moment the biggest stars in the London musical theatre which was Gilbert and Sullivan. The favorites were looked forward to with delight and one new major star came out of the show and that’s Jessie Bond who, most readers will have figured out is my favorite member of the company. Gilbert and Sullivan’s too. Two seconds-brief moments in the movie show the good research Leigh did. In the rehearsal scene when Gilbert corrects her pronunciation of a word he goes up to her privately and quietly corrects her. She’s got a twinkle-when she says it back to him slightly wrong-she’s utterly tweaking him and he corrects her again with suppressed delight. They get each other.

The other is when he wishes the ladies good luck in their dressing room and he gives her a kiss on her forehead. It’s not lecherous. It’s mutual fun, admiration and respect.
She’d originated roles from “HMS Pinafore” on including the title role in “Iolanthe” which although lovely isn’t that big and doesn’t really have moments that stick with an audience. In “The Mikado” she was Pitti-Sing and the darling of the show and the company. One day I’ll post some of the love letters she’d get from fans. From then on her roles were written for her-the next two being a clear sign that she had acting chops exceeding the rest of the company including its acknowledged star, George Grossmith. Look at the next two parts: Mad Margaret and above all Phoebe, the most complex and finest acting role they wrote. It’s my belief it wouldn’t be that layered if it weren’t written to her.

In “Topsy-Turvy” the one egregiously awful element is the disastrous casting of Allan Corduner as Sullivan. I have no problem with his being a dandy-Sullivan loved the upper tiers of society having come from a very low tier and prized being accepted by the Royal Family. But Corduner plays when conducting as an idiot-flapping his conductor arms from the elbows like one of Jerry’s Kids. He’s not a serious musician-he’s a priss. The band would have laughed him out of the pit.

Jim Broadbent. If I were to meet Gilbert I suspect I’d think Broadbent played him better than Gilbert did. It’s a jaw-droppingly right performance.

And about THE CONTROVERSY: I don’t want to get into it. The points are well taken but to the point of absurdity and to drum the show out of the canon is disgraceful. Yes-drop the yellow face, I’m ok with losing the wigs. The slanty-eyes, cringe. Don’t need ‘em. The show announces itself as Japan over and over. Some have European’d it, setting it in Italy-‘Milano’ (‘gentlemen of Milan-get it?) which I’ll admit is a damn fine cookie. It doesn’t work. As a satire on English customs it has to be set somewhere foreign to the audience or the jokes don’t work. For this kind of satire it’s the distance that frees the show to make fun of the very audience watching it.

The only genuinely Japanese sounding theme in it is ‘Miya Sama, Miya Sama’. It sounds Japanese because it is. Sullivan didn’t write it. He chose a traditional folk tune. He had no intention of writing faux ‘japanese’. I’d say it’s one of the most ‘english’ of his scores-and if the main theme of the overture isn’t an Irish Jig then I don’t know what is.