Synopsis of the Script

In the year 1875, young Mr. Sullivan, the composer, is conducting his oratorio, The Prodigal Son at the Crystal Palace. During the ensuing thunder of applause, he has eyes for no-one but Grace, his fiancee, who is enraptured by Sullivan's brilliance as a serious composer. She disapproves equally passionately of his sometime vagaries into the lighter side of music — such as the scores for the operettas of the rising comic author and librettist W. S. Gilbert.

Richard D'Oyly Carte, enterprising manager of the Royalty Theatre, is convinced that Gilbert and Sullivan have a very big future as an operatic team and would like to manage them personally.

Sullivan is torn with his desire to retain Grace's unqualified love but decides to complete the score of Gilbert's new book Trial by Jury, feeling that Grace will realise he is disregarding her wishes only in order to hasten the day of their marriage.

The opening night is an unqualified success. Sullivan, who has conducted the orchestra, is elated until he realises Grace has left the auditorium in disdain. She breaks off the engagement.

Sullivan now resigns himself to life without Grace and henceforth divides his creative efforts between grand compositions of the highest merit and a sparkling stream of light music which proves the perfect complement to Gilbert's witty librettos.

While Gilbert and Sullivan are working on their new opera, The Sorcerer, they enter into partnership with Richard D'Oyly Carte for the management of all their future operas. Thus is the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company born.

The universal popularity of the operas is not without its drawbacks. The works are being pirated all over the United States without any royalties being paid.

In an effort to curb the unscrupulous American methods of stealing their operas, Gilbert, Sullivan and D'Oyly Carte, accompanied by Mrs. Gilbert and 'Helen Lenoir', D'Oyly Carte's secretary, take the Opera Company to New York with a new opera, which turns out to be a raging success all over America, entitled The Pirates of Penzance.

The next outstanding event in the history of the operatic partnership is the building of the Savoy Theatre by Richard D'Oyly Carte as a fitting frame for his fantastically successful entertainment venture. The opening night is doubly auspicious as it also marks the first occasion on which electricity is used to light an English theatre.

In spite of the continuing success of the partnership between 1881 and 1884 with Patience, Iolanthe, and Princess Ida, the personal relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan becomes increasingly discordant. Now a close friend of the Royal Family, Sullivan also enjoys all the fashionable social events of the year and never misses an important meeting at Ascot.

Fate steps in, however, and brings about another inner struggle between the Bach and the Offenbach in Sullivan when Gilbert conceives the brilliant inspiration for The Mikado. Sullivan works night after night to complete the score on time. He is knighted by Queen Victoria, who suggests that he should write a grand opera.

The sparkle and gaiety of the annual D'Oyly Carte river picnic is shattered when the grievances which have been accumulating between Gilbert and Sullivan fro many years reach breaking point. Sullivan, still meditating over Queen Victoria's words, suggests to Gilbert that he should write a grand opera with him. Gilbert jokingly avows that no-one ever hears the words in grand opera, whereupon Sullivan forces the conversation onto a serious level by declaring that he would like to write in a field where his music does not constantly take second place. He further maintains that the Gilbert and Sullivan operas are becoming repetitious and that he is not prepared to go on adding his music to Gilbert's comedies any longer. He has lost his liking for comic opera and will have no more to do with it.

As the quarrel reaches its climax, in spite of the attempted intervention of Richard and Helen D'Oyly Carte and Mrs. Gilbert, the entire D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, led by George Grossmith, rise to their feet to toast the health of Gilbert and Sullivan.

The first night of Ruddigore and the press notices the following day carry none of the signs of sure success of the previous opera — and Sullivan goes abroad leaving no address.

It is Helen D'Oyly Carte who finally tracks him down in the casino at Monte Carlo where he is on a gambling spree. She tells him that her husband is building a new theatre — for grand opera — and invites Sullivan to realise his ambition by composing a new work for the opening. Sullivan decides to return to England.

The new opera The Yeomen of the Guard is a triumph. Sullivan's acid remarks at the picnic about 'the same old mixture as before' had obviously made its mark on Gilbert as his latest libretto is much more serious in vein, with a moving and dramatic finale. Never have Gilbert and Sullivan been on such terms of mutual admiration.

Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert return from a trip in 1890 to find that yet another success, The Gondoliers, has reached its 200th performance at the Savoy. Calling there to discuss the future with Richard and Helen D'Oyly Carte, Gilbert, gruffer than ever and now a permanent victim of gout, discovers that the foyer has been redecorated and enhanced with a resplendent new carpet on the staircase leading to Crate's office. While he waits for news of his absent manager, Gilbert picks up a copy of the quarterly accounts and nearly explodes when he discovers that D'Oyly Carte has deducted four thousand five hundred pounds for 'expenses'. His fury increases when he discovers that the Cartes and Sullivan are all in Shaftesbury Avenue inspecting the progress on the Royal English Opera House, a project of which he heartily disapproves.

The 'Carpet Quarrel' continues to rage next day in Carte's office at the Savoy. Gilbert, now thoroughly roused, even hurls accusations and recriminations against Sullivan who refuses to support him in his attitude about the expenses. Carte maintains immovably that the deductions from the profits come under the justifiable category of fair wear and tear. With no prospect of a reconciliation Gilbert takes his leave down the offending carpet.

The Royal English Opera House opens with Ivanhoe which does not have the same popular appeal as the light operas which Sullivan composed in partnership with Gilbert. He has a further mental jolt when Queen Victoria requests a Command Performance at Windsor — of The Gondoliers — instead of Ivanhoe as he would have expected.

Several Years pass before Gilbert and Sullivan meet again during a rehearsal for a revival of The Yeomen of the Guard at the Savoy. Gilbert and Sullivan resolve to 'bury the hatchet' in public by reviving the custom of taking the first night curtain together — with D'Oyly Carte. Warming up to the idea, they decide, with their old humorous verve, that Gilbert and Carte, as well as Sullivan, should be wheeled onto the stage in invalid chairs.

On the revival opening night, as The Yeomen of the Guard moves towards its touching finale, Gilbert and Crate are already cheerfully installed in their bath chairs waiting for Sullivan, little knowing that the tragic mood of the opera is about to find its echo in their midst with the arrival backstage of Sir Arthur Sullivan's manservant Louis — alone. Too moved to speak, he hands Gilbert a letter, characteristic of the gentle charm of the man he has served for so many years:— "My dear Gilbert — I feel the disappointment so much. Good luck to you all. Three bath chairs would have looked wonderful from the front". It is the last act in the famous partnership.

In the year 1907 Gilbert, on his way to Buckingham Palace to receive his knighthood from Edward VII, pauses before the Sullivan memorial in the Embankment Gardens, full of memories of his great partnership with Sullivan and D'Oyly Carte, of which he is now the sole survivor.

Pensively he repeats his own word which are engraved on the side of the plinth:

Page modified 16 April 2009