When I was a kid, I was a huge fan of Gilbert and Sullivan, and spent hours listening to a couple of records we had, particularly The Mikado. It seemed like G&S was pretty popular back then – a staple of community theater, at least. But now it seems to have disappeared from the cultural landscape. Is that true, or am I just missing it? Or maybe it’s cyclical, and due for a revival.
Anyone else have fond memories of Gilbert and Sullivan? Bonus points if you know which one was the librettist.
It seems to go in cycles. I have vague memories of “The Pirates of Penzance” being popular several decades ago, but I wasn’t paying attention.
I became interested in Gilbert & Sullivan after watching “Topsy Turvy”, which was an excellent movie. I would love to see a good production of “The Mikado”. I have CDs of most of their operettas. Unfortunately, like much opera, it seems that the best performances are on the really old recordings, and the modern recordings have mediocre performances.
Sullivan was the librettist.
Correction, Sullivan was the composer and Gilbert was the librettist.
I’ve done a fair bit over the last decade, but I don’t think it’s as popular as formerly; it probably needs to be discovered by a new generation of audiences.
–Malacandra, a.k.a. Strephon, Sergeant of Police, Lord Mountararat, Pooh-Bah, and Duke of Plaza-Toro.
The best production of the Mikado in recent years was a Canadian production in the 80’s wherein Eric Idle played Ko-ko
I love G&S - here on the “guylandt” is the GASLOCOLI that one of these days I will get the courage to audition for. I did a lot of G&S shows in HS and college
I played Lady Jane in Patience
Katishaw in the Mikado
Ruth in Pirates
and Buttercup in Pinafore
as an overall production, i think my favorite is The Mikado, but my favorite role was Lady Jane (perhaps because that was the only one I did in a professional theatre - at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie NY with the Mid Husdon G&S Society
I have mixed feelings about Idle’s rewriting of one or two of the arias. The results were certainly funny enough, but you just don’t do that. And it’s not exactly in the spirit of Sir William to have the word “pissed” rhyme with “They’ll none of them be missed”! (And what’s he got against gynecologists?)
Actually it is a bit of a tradition to update the lyrics of an aria to match the current political climate - I’ve seen it done a number of times
Eh, talking of the Mikado, I’ve done him too. “I forget the punishment for compassing the death of the Heir Apparent… Yes. Something lingering, with boiling oil in it.” 
My housemate is currently directing our university society’s Ruddigore (next March in Southampton, UK) but the popularity is a bit low at the moment - smallest intake for a good few years.
As for the Mikado being a good one, I’m hoping to re-direct it in a couple of years time (currently on a short-list).
PT also a.k.a. Lord Mountararat, along with Major-General Stanley and Cyril
When I was a kid my grandparents had a tape of the music from HMS Pinafore. As far as I can tell they bought the tape, inserted it into the player in their car, and never took it out. Every time I hear that music I feel transported to the the back seat of their car.
I was an usher once at an opera house that was playing The Mikado - that’s the only live performance I’ve ever seen. But I love my CDs of Pinafore, Pirates, Mikado and Trial By Jury. I need to collect the rest of them.
I performed with a G&S Company for ten years (patter baritone, thank you very much).
Roles I have played:
[ul]
[li]Ko-Ko in The Mikado[/li][li]Dick Deadeye in H.M.S. Pinafore[/li][li]Giuseppi in The Gondoliers[/li][li]Grosvenor in Patience[/li][li]The Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance[/li][li]Sir Marmaduke Poindexter in The Sorcerer[/li][li]Sir Despard and Sir Roderick in Ruddigore[/li][/ul]
And I have been an on-and-off again member of the Savoynet (a listserv for G&S devotees) since, oh, 1997.
Kizarvexius, have you ever believed you are a duck? 
/hijack
OOH! Let’s do a duet!
:in my richest alto:
“There’s beauty in the bellow of the blast…”
Dumb question: why “Savoyards” for Gilbert & Sullivan fans?
not sure - but I believe the D’Oly Carte Company often performed at the Savoy Theatre
Fair enough, but it just feels wrong to me to do this with G&S. Gilbert & Sullivan are like the opposite of Shakespeare: Shakespeare easily accommodates any change in setting or period because Shakespeare is universal. There’s nothing particularly Danish about Hamlet. Gilbert & Sullivan, by contrast, whether set in Italy or medieval Japan, is always about Victorian England.
I think the problem is that some of the lyrics in the Mikado are not so politically correct: “There’s the banjo serenader, and the others of his race,” etc. I think it’s a longstanding tradition to replace the “society offenders” on Ko-Ko’s list. Don’t know about other arias, though.
On the Mikado LP I have, in “My Object All Sublime,” the woman who dyes her hair and pinches her figure “Is painted with vigor/And permanent walnut juice.” Only when I consulted a score in the library did I learn that the original words were “Is blacked like a nigger/With permanent walnut juice.”
I have to say I used to love G&S starting in high school and into my twenties, but these days (some 30 years later) they seem a bit mannered. One evidence of this is that I still have LPs of all the operas but I haven’t updated any of them to CDs. But I did enjoy very much the bits of the operas that appeared in Topsy Turvy.
[slight hijack]It was at that same time that I became entranced with Goon Shows (British radio series “starring Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan, with Ray Ellington and his Quartet, and Max Geldray. Orchestra conducted by Wally Stott, script by Eric Sykes and Spike Milligan, directed by (I don’t remember). This is Wallace Greenslade, saying ‘Loodgie!’”) I recently bought some CDs from Amazon, and found them rather less hilarious than I remembered. Maybe I’m losing my sense of humor :eek: I think I’m going to search to see if there’s another thread anywhere on the Goon Show.[/slight hijack]
Sorry for the hijack, carry on.
Aye . . . the original lyrics to “They’ll None of Them Be Missed” name “the serenading nigger and the others of his race.” In most productions, this blithe invitation to genocide is omitted – “nigger” typically replaced with “banjo.”