Sorcerer: English Language Edition, Vocal Score

by W.S. Gilbert (Composer)

THIS 24 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: The Works of Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan, by William S. Gilbert. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 1419159534.

Genres: Plays, Humor, Satire, Music, Theatre

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1877

About the author

British playwright and lyricist Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) wrote a series of comic operas, including Her Majesty's Ship Pinafore (1878) and The Pirates of Penzance (1879), with composer Sir Arthur Sullivan.

This English dramatist, librettist, poet, and illustrator in collaboration with composer Sullivan produced fourteen comic operas, which include The Mikado , one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre.

Opera companies, repertory companies, schools and community theatre groups throughout and beyond the English-speaking world continue to perform regularly these operas as well as most of their other Savoy operas. From these works, lines, such as "short, sharp shock", "What, never? Well, hardly ever!", and "Let the punishment fit the crime," form common phrases of the English language.

Gilbert also wrote the Bab Ballads , an extensive collection of light verse, which his own comical drawings accompany.

His creative output included more than 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. According to The Cambridge History of English and American Literature , the "lyrical facility" of Gilbert "and his mastery of metre raised the poetical quality of comic opera to a position that it had never reached before and has not reached since."

Reviews

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bettie's Books

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this on my Kindle as part of The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan while I watched it on video (found on YouTube)

I liked the play but the performance I watched had some changes in the action (I am sure as part of the director's "vision" of the play) which completely changed the meaning of some of the scenes. Perhaps I should try watching a different production and see if my opinion of the operetta improves!

[Rose Rosetree · Rating 5 out of 5]

For wit, satire, and graceful rhymes, W.S. Gilbert was unsurpassed.

Here's a sample, still remembered with delight, from when I first sang along with my vinyl records at the age of nine:

If you want a proud foe to "make tracks"
If you'd melt a rich uncle in wax --
You've but to look in at our resident Djinn
Number seventy, Simmery Axe.

Oh yes, I suppose that "make tracks" was daring new slang when this masterwork was first performed in November 1877.

I rate this libretto with my highest admiration and, of course, FIVE STARS.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed watching a version of this operetta as well as reading the annotated script. It has the topsy-turvy plotline that is so well-loved in the G & S worlds and in this one, the world is turned upside down when the entire village consumes a love potion.

[Greg Kerestan · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the first proper full-length Gilbert and Sullivan show, "The Sorcerer" isn't a masterpiece. But it does a good job establishing the essential tropes of the Gilbert and Sullivan house style- exaggeratedly "high class" dialogue that suddenly veers into cockney casualness, lyrics between poetry and comic doggerel, and a love of the topsy-turvy that flip-flops classes and character types, upending and reuniting romances seemingly at random. The ending, however, is abrupt and anticlimactic, with good-natured comic sorcerer J. W. Wells being randomly sacrificed to the devil. Why not- it's only light opera.

[Benjamin Elliott · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know if this is exactly the right thing, but I read an ebook version of the libretto, and wow, so bad. I've been reading through all of the Gilbert and Sullivan librettos because I was able to download them for free, they're quick reads, and completionist what have you, but if many more of them are this bad I will quickly come to regret this. I don't think there is a single redeemable thing that takes place in the second act.