A Most Ingenious Paradox: The Art of Gilbert and Sullivan

by Gayden Wren

Written more than a century ago and initially regarded even by their creators as nothing more than light entertainment, the fourteen operas of Gilbert & Sullivan emerged over the course of the twentieth century as the world's most popular body of musical-theater works, ranking second only to Shakespeare in the history of English-language theater.

Despite this resounding popularity and proven longevity, most books written about the duo have focused on the authors rather than the works. With this detailed examination of all fourteen operas, Gayden Wren fills the void. His bold thesis finds the key to the operas' longevity, not in the clever lyrics, witty dialogue, or catchy music, but in the central themes underlying the characters and stories themselves. Like Shakespeare's comedies, Wren shows, the operas of Gilbert & Sullivan endure because of their timeless themes, which speak to audiences as powerfully now as they did the first time they were performed.

Written out of an abiding love for the Savoy operas, this volume is essential reading for any devotee of these enchanting works, or indeed for anyone who loves musical theater.

Genres: Music

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

I jumped with joy when I originally got this, having an insatiable appetite for Gilbert and Sullivan-related books. Now, having read it, I'm even happier to have it, because it's a wonderful book. Wren examines all of the Gilbert & Sullivan operas in detail (including the lost Thespis) to investigate the secret to their lasting popularity. He gives due credit to Sullivan's sparkling music and to Gilbert's witty libretti, but he believes - and argues convincingly - that the answer is instead the underlying themes of the operas, "as universal as their parody and satire are dated".

Wren's analyses of the operas are fascinating, and he illuminates words and music with equal ease, quoting liberally from the libretti and even reproducing passages of music to illustrate his points. He writes in a direct and humorous style, with great affection for the operas and their creators, but also with honesty, never hesitating to criticise weak points (though also never stinting with due praise). Finally, there's an excellent (and rather snarky) bibliography, which very helpfully includes brief reviews of each work listed.

Shedding new light on old favorites, A Most Ingenious Paradox is essential reading for any Savoyard.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably for geeks only, but not one of those hagiographic "pip pip, aren't they delightful, but they fought a lot" messes. A legitimate study of thematic elements. Also, don't miss the World's Snidest Bibliography, as entertaining as the rest of the book.

[tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

i've heard sneers from Savoyards about how this book's insights are trite and how anything interesting in it should be obvious to anyone. Having finished it, i find myself wondering, to resort to a cliché, if those people read the same book i did. (Or, more likely, if their definition of "obvious" is rather skewed by 40- or 50-year immersions in the Savoy operas, which, let's be honest, is a pretty rarefied position, and hardly relevant to someone just getting into the work.)

Ignore those people. This is an excellent volume that deals with each opera in detail, with interesting critical insights and a wealth of detail about compositional context and evolving critical reception. Particularly interesting was Wren's chapter on 'Princess Ida', contrasting the opera with the Gilbert play on which it was based and, in turn, the Tennyson poem on which that was based, and how certain critics have misinterpreted these adaptations over the years. His writing is clear and unhagiographic and he is unafraid to point out when he believes others' judgements are simply wrong, which is refreshing. You also get interesting chapters on both men before they were the single entity Gee-And-Ess, and on each man's work without the other.

Fascinating appendices deal with the plots of each opera (which are helpful to read first if you are unfamiliar - Wren's close-reading-heavy main chapters assume familiarity), the numerous post-first night cuts to Ruddigore, and, best of all, an overview of all the other G&S books the author has read, which is by turns helpful for further reading recommendations and splendidly catty.

Some quibbles, as there must be some: Wren is occasionally prone to statements that made me think, "what, really?", most notably his unqualified assertions that the Major-General and police in 'Pirates' are representative only of themselves and are not intended as satire, however light, of army officers or British police at large; and that the 1930s "produced no significant English-language theater works that retain popularity", which seems an extraordinary claim.

Furthermore, Wren seems to have some very confused ideas on rhyme. So Despard and Margaret's "June/boon" rhyme in "Oh, happy the lily" would be "commonplace, even banal" were it not for "When the Buds Are Blossoming" preceding it, but "blossom/opossum/across 'em" in the same number is "truly absurd" and "thrown together to enable the lyricist to follow his imagistic scheme". (The latter, and the similarly criticised "satyr/first-rater/theatre" from the 'Ruddigore' cut song "For thirty-five years I've been sober and wary", strike this reader as fine, inventive stunt rhymes which might jar in a tragedy or grand opera, but which are entirely suitable for a romantic comedy.) But it is hard to see, if one regards basic rhymes as "banal" and inventive ones as "absurd", what kind of rhymes the author thinks are actually good. Wren also includes the aforementioned "blossom/opossum/across 'em" among "feeble" rhymes that "rely on mispronunciation" to make them work, which is just straight-up untrue - all of those words/phrases rhyme when pronounced in the normal way. (He does not seem to have a problem with any of the times Gilbert rhymes "twenty" with any Italian term ending "-ente", each of which *is* an eye-rolling mispronunciation; or mispronunciations that aren't even necessary for rhyming, like the clangworthy "fest-EYE-na lente" in 'Iolanthe'.)

Nevertheless, these are minor points, and though i have not read nearly as many G&S books as the author, i'd recommend this to any newcomer along with Ian Bradley's Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan, the Cambridge Companion essay collection, and Gervase Hughes' study of Sullivan's music for the more technically musically-minded.

[Sammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful, insightful, vexing, maddening.... and possibly worthy?

At the time of publication, Gayden Wren was highly placed in the American arts critic world and he has a long association with G&S, so was well-placed to pen this refreshing look at the extensive collaboration of two of Victorian England's most admired creatives. He expounds at length on all aspects of the Savoy operas: text, music, structure, themes, and so on, as well as insights into the original creation of each work. There's lots to engage the mind here. Wren is at his best, I believe, in his 'big picture' thinking, tracking how the G&S collaboration evolved but also how each of the two men developed at different speeds, and how this development created an essentially new type of English artform.

On the smaller points, Wren is often enlightening, often entertaining, and frankly often perplexing! Perhaps it's because he's American, but his sense of humour often seems at odds with those of Gilbert. He finds the "babies in love" concept in Patience to be too silly (as if that was not the intention), finds the recitatives that open The Sorcerer to be workmanlike (of course they're not masterpieces, but there's clearly a sense of humour there that can be performed, as it was in the 1982 Brent Walker video), and is given to dismissing some of the stretched rhymes as being acts of desperation on the part of the lyricist, rather than acts of overt cheekiness. I've never been to an American production of the works, but I wonder if audiences there treat them as more self-consciously "classic"? Or perhaps it's that Wren sees these works as so devoid of any political or social sting that they must be more serious than most of us from the Commonwealth believe. (They're works of great art, don't mistake me, but that is not inherently the same thing as being serious.)

More intriguing still is Wren's habit - not infrequent in this volume - of dismissing all of those who came before. Several times he tells us sagely that every critic prior to him has either missed the truth about a song or has been wrong; occasionally, he acknowledges one critic walked up to the line but then clearly failed to see what was on the other side. This is taken to its logical extreme in the back of the book where, to quote another reviewer here, "the world's snidest bibliography" is to be found. Annotating all of his sources, good and great books are given their due by the author, but more seem to be terrible, not worth reading, even outright offensive.

Perhaps Wren's weakest point - oddly, for an entertainment writer - seems to be a limited interest in how a work is put together. He seems to suffer from that old-fashioned (indeed, 19th century) notion which used to regard Shakespeare's works as "masterpieces with a lot of confusing bits that were probably added in by someone else". People thought that writers sat in ivory towers creating gossamer and then disseminating it to artists, rather than the reality that an Elizabethan playwright worked closely with his company in developing a new play, with the company also invoking a decent amount of license to shape a work to their needs. The idea that Shakespeare himself might have thought pragmatically (god forbid!) was verboten: surely he would never include some coarse jokes to lighten the mood or reach a different part of the audience; surely he would never include a comic improv scene to bridge a costume change; surely he would never throw in some topical banter to an otherwise serious scene to take advantage of being relevant to his crowd; surely!

To give an example of the two complaints above which come together, take Princess Ida. The consensus view of most commentators is that Tennyson's original poem is the more feminist work (in line with that author's political leanings) while Gilbert's reworking, unintentionally or otherwise, gives it a distinctly less feminist tinge. Wren tells us straight that all of those commentators (all of them! on both Tennyson and Gilbert!) have completely misread the issue. Tennyson was actually the hateful misogynist and Gilbert's reworking artistically created a work of profound support for gender equality. Don't get me wrong: Wren is entitled to his argument and I do believe he hovers close to the mark when he talks about the real battle between youth vs old rather than female vs male, with Gilbert lightly satirising the movement rather than being a staid old patriarch. But that's not enough for the writer here, who not only dismisses all other critics with such certainty (such certainty) but invokes a serious of spurious arguments to prove this. He expounds at length upon Gilbert's decision to make Ida's father King Gama a negative character, where he is the good king in the poem to Hildebrand's bad king, and finds that this must have been done to emphasise how much of a break Ida is making from her "bleak, violent, confrontational" past. I must dissent - and strongly. Gama's world is certainly presented as bleak in Act I, but he and Ida don't interact until Act III, when they both show considerable compassion for one another. And indeed Hildebrand remains the crueller of the kings in the final act (until that topsy-turvy finale) while Gama's bleakness is presented through the actor who is always the most beloved in a G&S opera, namely the 'patter baritone'. Honestly it seems like disagreement for disagreement's sake! And when we examine that old-fashioned notion I mentioned, it falls apart some more. Gilbert and Sullivan famously wrote for a full-time repertory company comprised of artists of their choosing. Gilbert knew these two kings would be the role for his two baritones. He assigned the strengths of noble, proud cruelty to Rutland Barrington as Hildebrand, the lyric baritone who had already played the Sergeant of Police, Archibald Grosvenor, and Earl Mountararat in the three previous works. He thus needed to assign the role of King Gama to the 'patter' baritone George Grossmith, whose roles such as Sir Joseph Porter and the Major-General naturally inspired a character who so desires being unpleasant that he gets thoroughly fed up when his life is too easy! That is not to say that Wren is completely wrong about Gilbert's creative process. But he seems to be reaching for an advanced calculus textbook when a pocket calculator would do just as well.

My sense of this book is that, in trying to analyse words, music, and structure, Wren has perhaps overextended himself. (The musical examples, in particular, often seem simplistic to me.) For the kind of Savoyard with decades of knowledge much of the book will be redundant, although given each page is written in short, bursting paragraphs, there are likely to be insights here for even the most jaded fan. For most of us, the volume bubbles over with intriguing comments; even if I only find half of them truly believable, that's enough for me to place this on a "must-have" bookshelf for any lover of this marvellous, evergreen pieces.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful, opinionated.