UK Theatre Network

I have nothing to declare except my genius

As part of the Charles Court Opera season at the Rosie celebrating the centenary of Gilbert’s death, Martin Lamb’s lecture recital introduces the real life people behind the Savoy Operas. His lecture is interspersed with songs from Patience, H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe, and many others.

In 1918 Lytton Strachey published a famous book about eminent Victorians. His work redefined biography and took the glitter off some very prominent Victorians -  Cardinal Manning, Dr. Arnold, Florence Nightingale, and General Gordon. In Strachey’s view the Victorian age was overrated and their only true achievement were the operas by Gilbert & Sullivan. And their operas did make fun of prominent figures of the Victorian age. 

In H.M.S. Pinafore a bureaucrat and politician who is more used to shuffling papers than seamanship is made Ruler of the Queen’s Navy. It is, of course, the hilarious character of Sir Joseph Porter KCB. Lamb assumes that this character was based on the businessman and moralist W.H. Smith who held the monopoly of bookshops in railway stations and received an appointment to the admiralty. Porter is a caricature of Smith, not a fair portrayal, but Gilbert meant Porter to represent a wider trend in society.

Patience satirizes the aesthetic movement and their leaders – Oscar Wilde and Whistler who are represented by the character Bunthorne. Wilde was an artistic icon although, at that time, he had published only his first volume of poetry. Gilbert saw the tendency of people to fall under the spell of movements just because they are fashionable. Little has changed since then.

Martin Lamb’s illuminating lecture covered much more than the two examples I have given here. His recital of some of Gilbert and Sullivan’s most popular songs, accompanied by David Eaton, was truly beautiful.