Gregory Gower: Muses and memories
Recalling past memories of one’s youth is not always in the best interest to others, because we can all do the same and bore the pants off of the reader. My earliest recollection of Gilbert and Sullivan was at the age of thirteen when my parents took me to Lewisham Hippodrome to see the D’Oyly Carte perform all the G & S Operas and The Carl Rosa Company perform all what I would judge to be the serious side of opera! This probably put me in good stead for what was to come later on in my life.
Opera is not the easiest of the arts to follow whereas music tends to illustrate more than the words in telling a story, as with the serious side of opera where words are usually sung in German or Italian which somehow gives a more romantic feel than when sung in English. Nevertheless we can thank Gilbert and Sullivan whose works are sung in English in England and we can follow their nonsensical stories from beginning to the end without undue hesitation.
La Boheme is one of my favourite operas of all time with that haunting aria “Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen” which has me in tears every time I hear it. Equally at the end of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Yeomen of the Guard – Jack Point’s dying of a broken heart, with that dramatic finale music, especially as portrayed by Alistair Donkin (ex member of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company) whose performance at Devonshire Park Theatre with Eastbourne Gilbert & Sullivan Society in 2003 was overwhelmingly a real tear-jerker and when the final curtain came down – there lay Jack Point!
Say what you like, but to me music from yesteryear’s operas will never be surpassed by any future composer however talented and I believe that Puccini’s music had cornered the market!
Rummaging through the Archives of Gilbert and Sullivan Operas had me wondering how such a short list of operas could be so widely entertaining! It does not matter whether you see ‘The Mikado’ by several companies over a period of a year because every one of them is different - the music and words stay basically the same.
The choreography can be changed to match the period whether it was performed at the original date or from the twenties to the present day. The scenery is another burden on the pocket! Whether amateur societies can afford to hire scenery in this era due to the recession and rocketing prices is another matter. With our own company you have to imagine you are in a Courtyard in front of a Palace! You can, however paint the stage and hang different artifacts to give an appearance that you are in a Courtyard in front of a Palace!
The costumes can be made by a very clever Wardrobe person, which luckily the Eastbourne G & S Society do have and each year as one production closes, this clever person is planning the costumes for next year’s show.
Gregory Gower