‘The Gondoliers’ is the sunniest of all the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas and was one of the most harmonious collaborations between two such temperamentally incompatible yet artistically well-matched men. The morning after the rapturously received opening night in December 1889, Gilbert wrote to Sullivan: ‘I must thank you for the magnificent work you have […]

With its roots in the mid-nineteenth century English opera tradition of Balfe and Wallace, ‘The Yeomen of the Guard’, is an integrated hybrid of operetta and romantic opera that combines the sparkling essence of previous Savoy successes with heightened drama and emotion while its score is also free from the earnestness in which much of […]

This 1957 traversal of ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ marked the start of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company’s second cycle of the major Savoy Operas for Decca. It followed just eight years after the previous version but the improvements in sound quality – in stereo for the first time and wonderfully vivid – and performance values […]