Gilbert Sullivan And Their Victorian World

Not one of some seventy plays written by the most popular playwright of the English stage in Victoria's time is known to anyone but archivists today. That same fate befell the works of England's most honored composer of the period. His oratorios, odes, symphonic music, an opera--are all but silent now, save two incidental pieces (you have heard of them: "The Lost Chord" and "Onward Christian Soldiers"). But rarely have the serious works of contemporary geniuses more roundly flunked the test of time. Fame is fleeting. Yet join these two forgotten names with an ampersand, and you get Gilbert & Sullivan. Now fame is forever - or for a century and more, at least, and surely that's forever on a comic-opera stage. Gilbert & Sullivan revolutionized the theatre world, and to this day that world is a happier place because of their innovations. It was 1875 when Trial by Jury first dazzled London and (in a pirated version) New York audiences with the color and with and bounce of a Gilbert & Sullivan show. So the start of Gilbert & Sullivan's second century provides a fine occasion to look again at the story behind these amazing comic operas. The lives of William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) were as dramatic, amusing, far-fetched, throat-catching--and scenic--as their stagecraft. Beneath the two men's enormously popular collaborations were two hearts that beat as two. They simply did not get along. The trigger-tempered Gilbert, with his razor tongue and steady work habits, couldn't understand Sullivan's amiable procrastinations and easy social successes. Sullivan was convinced that his real genius was expressed by his prestigious music. Yet success after success forced the team to stay together for fifteen glorious years under the aegis of the polished Richard D'Oyly Carte. Then the whole thing blew up in a tragicomic quarrel about a carpet. If that plot resembles a Victorian romana a clef, so be it. Fictional romances exhibit no more posh settings, beautiful women, and crackling argument. There's even a touch of royalty, and a few absurdities, as well as a tragic climax. --from dust jacket.

This colorful history of a powerful family brings the world they lived in—the glittering Rome of the Italian Renaissance—to life. The name Borgia is synonymous with the corruption, nepotism, and greed that were rife in Renaissance Italy. The powerful, voracious Rodrigo Borgia, better known to history as Pope Alexander VI, was the central figure of the dynasty. Two of his seven papal offspring also rose to power and fame—Lucrezia Borgia, his daughter, whose husband was famously murdered by her brother, and that brother, Cesare, who inspired Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince. Notorious for seizing power, wealth, land, and titles through bribery, marriage, and murder, the dynasty’s dramatic rise from its Spanish roots to its occupation of the highest position in Renaissance society forms a gripping tale. From the author of The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici and other acclaimed works, The Borgias and Their Enemies is “a fascinating read” (Library Journal).

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.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan" by Arthur Sullivan, W. S. Gilbert. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

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

Taking an in-depth look at the causes of homelessness in the United States, Joel Blau disproves the convenient myths that most homeless are crazy, drug addicts, or lazy misfits who brought their suffering upon themselves. He shows that the current crisis was an inevitable result of economicand political changes in recent decades, systematically reviewing the explanations offered by researchers, politicians and pundits, from the deinstitutionalization of mental patients in the 1960s to the gentrification of urban neighborhoods in the 1970s to the evisceration of federal spending onsocial welfare in the 1980s. Blau argues that current government policies at every level are mired in pointless headcounting and quick-fix solutions that only push the homeless out of sight without touching the underlying causes. He advocates social reforms ranging form a national standard forwelfare benefits, a higher minimum wage, and establishment of a social sector for non-profit, affordable housing. A powerful contribution to public debate on homelessness, The Visible Poor must be read by concerned citizens as well as by policy-makers and advocates.

With In Churchill's Shadow, David Cannadine offers an intriguing look at ways in which perceptions of a glorious past have continued to haunt the British present, often crushing efforts to shake them off. The book centers on Churchill, a titanic figure whose influence spanned the century. Though he was the savior of modern Britain, Churchill was a creature of the Victorian age. Though he proclaimed he had not become Prime Minister to "preside over the liquidation of the British Empire," in effect he was doomed to do just that. And though he has gone down in history for his defiant orations during the crisis of World War II, Cannadine shows that for most of his career Churchill's love of rhetoric was his own worst enemy. Cannadine turns an equally insightful gaze on the institutions and individuals that embodied the image of Britain in this period: Gilbert & Sullivan, Ian Fleming, Noel Coward, the National Trust, and the Palace of Westminster itself, the home and symbol of Britain's parliamentary government. This superb volume offers a wry, sympathetic, yet penetrating look at how national identity evolved in the era of the waning of an empire.

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.