W. S. Gilbert

"This brand new 20th anniversary edition includes Thespis, Gilbert and Sullivan's first collaboration which is now being increasingly performed, despite the loss of the vocal and orchestral scores. It also features a completely new introduction, reflecting on the state of Gilbert and Sullivan nearly 150 years after the pair began their legendary collaboration, and new annotations addressing recent performance history, newly discovered 'lost' songs and dialogue, and, for the first time, Gilbert and Sullivan references in contemporary popular culture." -- Amazon.com.

Popular from its first performance in 1878, this work contains some of Gilbert's most clever flashes of wit and a number of Sullivan's most charming melodies. Music scholars Carl Simpson and Ephraim Hammett Jones have drawn on original manuscripts and early sources to produce handsome, newly engraved plates closest to Gilbert and Sullivan's original intentions. This authoritative and inexpensive edition is sure to delight Gilbert and Sullivan fans, operetta lovers, musicians, and students. H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical theatre piece up to that time. H.M.S. Pinafore was Gilbert and Sullivan's fourth operatic collaboration and their first international sensation. The story takes place aboard the ship HMS Pinafore. The captain's daughter, Josephine, is in love with a lower-class sailor, Ralph Rackstraw, although her father intends her to marry Sir Joseph Porter, the First Lord of the Admiralty. She abides by her father's wishes at first, but Sir Joseph's advocacy of the equality of humankind encourages Ralph and Josephine to overturn conventional social order. They declare their love for each other and eventually plan to elope. The captain discovers this plan, but, as in many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, a surprise disclosure changes things dramatically near the end of the story. Drawing on several of his earlier "Bab Ballad" poems, Gilbert imbued this plot with mirth and silliness. The opera's humour focuses on love between members of different social classes and lampoons the British class system in general. Pinafore also pokes good-natured fun at patriotism, party politics, the Royal Navy, and the rise of unqualified people to positions of authority. The title of the piece comically applies the name of a garment for girls and women, a pinafore, to the fearsome symbol of a warship. Pinafore's extraordinary popularity in Britain, America and elsewhere was followed by the similar success of a series of Gilbert and Sullivan works, including The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. Their works, later known as the Savoy operas, dominated the musical stage on both sides of the Atlantic for more than a decade and continue to be performed today. The structure and style of these operas, particularly Pinafore, were much copied and contributed significantly to the development of modern musical theatre.

Ozymandias / Percy Bysshe Shelley The destruction of Sennacherib / George Gordon Byron The vision of Belshazzar / George Gordon Byron Alexander's feast / John Dryden Antony to Cleopatra / William Haines Lytle The angels' song / Edmund Hamilton Sears Boadicea / William Cowper The Pied Piper of Hamlin / Robert Browning Bruce to his men at Bannockburn / Robert Burns Lepanto / Gilbert Keith Chesterton The "revenge" / Alfred Tennyson The landing of the pilgrim fathers / Felicia Dorothea Hemans On the late massacre in Piedmont / John Milton The deacon's masterpiece / Oliver Wendell Holmes Paul Revere's ride / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Concord hymn / Ralph Waldo Emerson On the extinction of the Venetian Republic / William Wordsworth Incident of the French camp / Robert Browning The star-spangled banner / Francis Scott Key On first looking into Chapman's Homer / John Keats A visit from Saint Nicholas / Clement Clarke Moore Old Ironsides / Oliver Wendell Holmes The Helen / Edgar Allan Poe Anne Rutledge / Edgar Lee Masters The charge of the Light Brigade / Alfred Tennyson Maryland, my Maryland / James Ryder Randall Battle-hymn of the republic / Julia Ward Howe Barbara Frietchie / John Greenleaf Whittier O captain! My captain! / Walt Whitman Invictus / William Ernest Henley The modern major-general / William Schwenk Gilbert The new Colossus / Emma Lazarus Recessional / Rudyard Kipling Cargoes / John Masefield Miniver Cheevy / Edwin Arlington Robinson In Flanders fields / John McCrae Fire and ice / Robert Frost

This is the book and lyrics of the best-known Gilbert & Sullivan operas and Bab Ballads, with Sir William Gilbert's own illustrations. It includes the H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado, as well as the Bab Ballads. Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836 - 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, The Mikado. These, as well as most of their other Savoy operas, continue to be performed regularly throughout the English-speaking world and beyond by opera companies, repertory companies, schools and community theatre groups. Lines from these works have become part of the English language, such as "short, sharp shock", "What, never? Well, hardly ever!", and "Let the punishment fit the crime". Gilbert also wrote the Bab Ballads, an extensive collection of light verse accompanied by his own comical drawings. His creative output included over 75 plays and libretti, numerous stories, poems, lyrics and various other comic and serious pieces. His plays and realistic style of stage direction inspired other dramatists, including Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw.

This issue lacks Ko-Ko's "List" song. Yum-Yum and Nanki-Poo's duet, "Were you not to Ko-Ko plighted," is reduced in this version to 1 verse, sung by Nanki Poo. "The sun whose rays" appears in two places, pn. 13-14 and 24-25.

Lock up your daughters; the pirates are coming to town! Peppered with unforgettable melodies and tongue-twisting songs, The Pirates of Penzance is one of the most popular operettas ever written. Opera Australia's new production is an effervescent smash hit with a national tour and jubilant sellout seasons everywhere. In spite of being apprenticed to a Pirate King as a child, Frederic has led a very sheltered life. So when he arrives in Penzance with his boisterous shipmates, there are a few surprises in store for him! It all ends happily, but not before he's dodged the Old Bill, fallen in love and made some rather inconvenient discoveries. Director Stuart Maunder (who last directed this show for D'Oyly Carte Company at London's Savoy Theatre), designers Roger Kirk, Richard Roberts and Trudy Dalgleish, choreographer Elizabeth Hill and a stellar cast join forces once again to present a spirited new production of this Gilbert and Sullivan classic. This bright and breezy production is guaranteed to have you laughing in your seat. It's a big adventure where our swashbuckling Pirate King meets his match in the bumbling Major General. Starring: Anthony Warlow, David Hobson, John Bolton Wood, Taryn Fiebig and Suzanne Johnston as Ruth. - Container.