Gilbert, Sullivan and D'Oyly Carte

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II Conjunction of Gilbert, Sullivan, and D'Oyly Carte?Gilbert's early work?Fairy comedies?Pygmalion and Galatea?Sweethearts?Bab Ballads?Sullivan at Chapel Royal?His first song?Disciple of Mendelssohn?At the R.A.M.?Mendelssohn scholarship?Leipsic? Tempest music?D'Oyly Carte's early career?His...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II Conjunction of Gilbert, Sullivan, and D'Oyly Carte?Gilbert's early work?Fairy comedies?Pygmalion and Galatea?Sweethearts?Bab Ballads?Sullivan at Chapel Royal?His first song?Disciple of Mendelssohn?At the R.A.M.?Mendelssohn scholarship?Leipsic? Tempest music?D'Oyly Carte's early career?His musical agency?Royalty Theatre? Thespis ?First night at Gaiety Theatre compared with Savoy premiire. An expert forester will tell the approximate age of an oak by its girth, the number of its branches, and other indications recognized by his craft; but concerning the acorn from which sprang the tree, whether it had been wind-sown or planted in the forest by some feudal lord of a long-past century is beyond the art and ken of forestry to divine. In like manner it may be acknowledged that we, whose lives have been closely associated with the upshoot of .the combined genius of Gilbert, Sullivan, and D'Oyly Carte, can measure the circumference and number the branches of the mighty tree which beneath their able husbandry took root, grew, and spread until all other trees in England's lyric forest were dwarfed. But who can tell of a surety how and in what circumstances the seed was sown which was in later years to bring forth such endless crop of rich fruit ? The question has often been put to me?a question which I have never been able with sufficient confidenceFAIRY COMEDIES 9 or authority to answer: Can you tell us by what accident or stroke of good fortune the three famous Savoyards were brought together ? This remains a mere matter of surmise, open, at once, to assertion and contradiction. All that we are able to chronicle is as follows: Some few years before our author joined forces with Arthur Sullivan, the name of W. S. Gilbert had become familiar to...