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William Gilbert who wrote the book and lyrics for the fourteen comic
operas he produced with Arthur Sullivan had a penchant for being about 20 years ahead of
his time. In the 1880’s, he didn’t write serious operas like the big names in
Europe, he wrote comic, satiric operas about everyday English life. By the turn of the
century, he was no longer writing satiric comic operas; he was writing musical comedy of
the type that would have been right at home in Hollywood of the twenties and thirties.
The Grand Duke of 1896 is such a show. However the producers of the Gilbert and
Sullivan operas were looking for another sure-fire money-maker like The Mikado or HMS
Pinafore and insisted on producing the piece as though it were one. This style made The
Grand Duke seem "old fashioned," and, after its initial run of 123 performances
in London, it has never had a professional revival.
Seattle Producer Mike Storie started researching The Grand Duke early in 1998, and
quickly discovered that, due to its rarity in this country, there was no printed
orchestral music for the show, the vocal scores were out of print and contained none of
the dialogue, and there were at least four versions of the dialogue, all with varying
numbers of songs and with additions to, and deletions from, the text.
The detailed planning process for this show started with a meeting of the Society
Trustees last August, only a few weeks after the closing of one of the Society’s most
successful productions, "The Pirates of Penzance," which brought both critical
acclaim and an audience of over 10,000 to the Bagley Wright Theatre last July.
Following this, Storie rounded up all of the available versions of the music and the
text and began collaborating with Alan Lund, who has been Music Director with the Society
for over 30 years, and Hal Ryder who started as Stage Director with the Society last
season for Pirates.
The Seattle Society did a simplified version of The Grand Duke in 1982, using a text
modified by then Artistic Director Gordon Gutteridge, with an orchestration by Society
member Allen Howe, based on the piano music and an old studio recording of the songs from
the show.
The definitive version of the music is Arthur Sullivan’s Autograph Score at the
Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. There are copies of this score (with some songs
removed) available for rent from the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company in England. However,
this company has been in and out of bankruptcy for the past decade and at the time we made
inquiries, they were unable to answer our requests.
Last fall, thanks to the Internet and a great deal of research by Storie, involving a
Ph.D. dissertation in music from Wales, help from a music librarian in England, help from
a music publisher and from a professor of choral music, both in New England, the Seattle
Society has been able to modify and upgrade our "homemade" score so that it is
virtually identical to Sullivan’s original music and includes all of the instruments
and all of the songs.
Those early manuscripts consisted of thirteen hand-written books, some of which are
barely legible, and which contain numerous errors. Alan Lund has been slaving over a hot
computer to get all of the music entered into modern music publishing software so the
parts for our 26-piece orchestra can be easily edited, transposed and printed as required.
We learned in the process that the music for this show is every bit as good as that of
the other Gilbert and Sullivan operas, although it tends to be more complex, with a more
modern sound, and includes delightful parodies of Strauss waltzes and even an
"Offenbach-style" Can-Can!
In a parallel effort, Hal Ryder began his own research into the various textual
versions of the show. He was struck by the similarity of the text of The Grand Duke with
some of the early movie musical comedies, including such classics as Duck Soup by the Marx
Brothers. Thus he hit upon the idea of updating the show to the mid-thirties, a time when
verbal wit abounded, and the plots and songs of musicals often had classical roots. This
was a period when America was developing its own style of farce.
The plot of The Grand Duke revolves around a theater company conspiring to overthrow
the government of a small German Duchy and replace the politicians with members of the
cast, depending upon their theatrical rank. Thus the theater manager becomes the new Grand
Duke, and the leading lady becomes the Duchess, and so forth. Using American film as a
starting point only, the style of the production will seek to be the missing link between
comic "opera bouffe" (the typical G&S style) and the American
"zany" comic musical. "In essence," says Ryder, "we are doing a
newly discovered G&S musical."
The Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society is one of the few theatrical companies in
the world with the size and scope to produce this type of show which is certainly the most
complex of all the G&S comic operas both in music and in dialogue. While the
interpretation will be unique, the text of the show will actually be very similar to that
which was first staged in London 100 years ago. The music will also be very much what Sir
Arthur Sullivan conducted at that long ago opening. Neither has been heard (certainly in
this country) since 1896. But this new and complete production of The Grand Duke will be
heard (and seen) in Seattle for eleven performances starting the evening of July 9, 1999
at the Bagley Wright Theatre at Seattle Center, followed by one performance only at the
Sixth International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Buxton, England.
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