IMPERIAL COLLEGE OPERATIC SOCIETY THE GONDOLIERS 16 & 17 February 1978 Concert Hall, IC Union.

I attended 2 performances of this 6-performance run; which was very badly timed so that the last performance coincided with the last night of the D'Oyly Carte season. My opinion of The Gondoliers as an opera has been stated elsewhere in this issue. Suffice to say that I have always considered that the piece is unstageable - I cannot truthfully say that I have ever seen a production that completely worked before - in this production Michael Withers and Ian Gledhill achieved the impossible. On the first-night I was there the Overture began a bit pedantically, the fast bits were exciting, the slow bits a trifle lethargic (this did not apply on the second night, when lethargy became tranquillity). Towards the end of the oboe solo (the oboe had a bit of trouble starting off, on the second night), it all suddenly broadened out and became very majestic and expansive with some ravishing sound from the strings in the gavotte. My only criticism was the pause at the end; if played without the spurious Sargeant coda (as it was) the overture should run straight into the opening chorus without a break. Andy Potter's ''high rise'' set looked splendid, and had the practical effect of getting the chorus off the floor for a good deal of the action and prevented the usual cluttering up of that tiny stage. The cast and chorus coped remarkably in situations which would have given me acute Vertigo. Ian Gledhill had divided the acts into 6 scenes - which is not original, it was suggested once by a correspondent in either the G & S Journal or The Savoyard, but this may well have been the first time that the idea was staged. The various minor Gondolieri and Contadine always pose a problem, but here Ian was fortunate in having as Antonio and Vittoria two people of very determined personalities in the persons of Ellis Pike & Cathy Fetherston, who shone as I have never seen these parts do before. The latter was played as a prostitute who solicited from her window above the Piazza - of that more anon. Michael Withers guided the orchestra through a kaleidoscope of ever-changing moods and emotions which left me gasping with admiration, as I never imagined it was possible to get so much out of the score of Gondoliers. Some of his tempi were surprisingly unorthodox, but in all cases when I pondered them I realised how right and appropriate they always were - as for example the excessively slow tempo of "When others claimed" enabled the Duchess to sound touchingly maternal to her daughter in a way that that section has never sounded before. Ellis Pike was a strong and determined Antonio with a firm clear voice that I want to hear a lot more of. The staging of the second verse of his song, on the high steps, raising his tankard to the "public lady" at the window was excellent. It is rare for an Antonio to shine, but this one did. He maintained a splendid dignity throughout, until, having entered Vittoria's bedroom for a "lie" at the end of his song, he was ultimately booted out, for having no money to pay the bill. If he had descended with his clothing partially undone to the jeers of his fellow gondolieri, this would have rounded off his discomfiture superbly. This final denouement occurred during the closing bars of "We're called gondolieri" and though funny was a little bit distracting of one's attention from the Principals. What a pity that after such a splendid build up he was allowed to fade into the background after his "bit" was over. Cathy Fetherston as a seductive, randy, blowsy Carmen-figure was quite superb; the way she made up to Giuseppe with a seductively fingered rose on "we tacitly ignore you" (which she tacitly wasn't doing) was a delight. Mike Tripp did about as much as one can do with such an impossible role as Giorgio, but I did feel that the way he was made to fold his arms behind his head, and lean back lazily and comfortably on ''nothing like work'' was a bit over-obvious. Jeff Jenkins spoke Annibale's lines with sense and no-nonsense intelligence. Jane Capper brought a lovely voice, but a certain amount of diffidence to the role of Fiametta, unfortunately she muddled her words badly on the first night I was there. Steve Bodle's Francesco did not exactly set the skies afire, and it was a pity he managed to crack on the second night. Poor Steve, my heart bled for him! (The best Francesco I have ever seen was Max Taylor in ICOS's last Gondoliers, which by all other criteria was pretty terrible.) Richard Wilson made a very brave try as Luiz. Can ever a man have tried so hard and so bravely at a part for which he was basically unsuited; it is to his credit that it almost came off. The two duets with Casilda were musically an almost impossible compromise as the tempo that was right for Sally was inevitably wrong for Richard, and vice versa. "O Rapture" which showed Sally off to perfection, did rather show Richard up. However, for a reason which I am at a a loss to explain, the second duet really did work, and was one of the most moving renderings of this duet I have heard. Richard got his dialogue into a right muddle on the Thursday night. Sally Heslop as Casilda had dignity and sweetness of voice, it was a truly lovely performance. Roger Woodward's Duke was a typically Roger Woodward performance, it didn't say anything new about the Duke but it was a model of style and control, and a series of facial expressions which were a joy to watch. He was not word-perfect. Debbie Johnson as the Duchess was equally stylish and imbued the part with a such a genuine middle-aged air as to be almost uncanny. John Barrett was a rather sombre and dead-pan Don Alhambra, but he knew how to get the laughs and he had an austere dignity with a sneer of cold command which was very nice. He had the air of a man who knew exactly how to manipulate everybody. Vocally it was mellow and warm, and is beginning to remind me of Benjamin Davis's voice. He seemed to be slightly off key on "Do not give way". Marco was safe in the hands of Tim Johnson whose voice is developing a sweetness it did not have before, and he succeeded in making that supremely boring song "Take a Pair of Sparkling eyes" sound interesting. He and Roger Nicholls made an excellent pair, similar height, and with similar sexy good looks, and while Tim led musically, Roger led histrionically - division of labour. I had been convinced that Roger Nicholls as Giuseppe would not work, how wrong one can be. I think there can be no-one (except perhaps George Grossmith) who could fall down on to the floor in such an irresistibly way - he did it in The Zoo, in The Trial of Mr. Wells, and here, at the and of "Rising early in the morning”. It is becoming a Nicholls trademark. Delith Brook was outstanding as Gianetta. It is not much of a part histrionically, but there were tears in my eyes at the end of “Kind sir”. Bethan Howells was a sweet but small-voiced Tessa; she must, however, learn not to throw away lines by not waiting until laughter for a previous line has subsided. Thus her line “There's something in that” in reply to Don Alhambra, which was so funny on Thursday, was lost completely on Friday because she spoke through the laughter. Anne Otworowski (Giulia) and Alison Carter (Inez) were competent but unmemorable. I did not really think it was possible to do so much with The Gondoliers, without actually sending it up. In this production Ian Gledhill achieved a success which I think can only be equated with his first production (Sorcerer), and Michael Withers added a new dimension to his conducting, having added dignity and quiet emotion to vitality. The make-up of the chorus was a trifle perfunctory; that of some of the principals (such as the Duke and Duchess) was excellent. Somebody ought to tell John Barratt the techniques of a beard, and not to pull up his robe so much when descending steps. MICHAEL WALTERS

PROGRAMME NOTES For ICOS'S GONDOLIERS by Michael Walters

"On the first night of The Gondoliers I was in a whirl. I walked on, took one look at the audience, and gulped. Then I saw Sullivan's face beaming up at me from the Conductor's stand, and my confidence returned." Those words were written by Decima Moore, who made her stage debut in The Gondoliers, which opened at the Savoy Theatre on 7th December 1889. The opera was the last truly successful collaboration between Gilbert & Sullivan - an oasis of calculated calm in the midst of the disagreements that clouded their later years. Its style is different to that of the others, because the nature of their relationship was different when they wrote it. Gone is the biting sarcasm and satire which is a prominent feature of much of Gilbert's other work. Gondoliers is a gentle comedy, soft and refined - truly nearer to the style of English musical comedy than to light opera, and it may well be that The Gondoliers influenced the subsequent development of English musical comedy more than any other single work. Gilbert remarked of The Gondoliers: "It gives one the chance of shining right through the twentieth century with a reflected light." In that he was right, and the popularity of the piece has never waned. Gilbert fussed a great deal over the writing of The Gondoliers. He and Sullivan had just patched up one quarrel and were being almost neurotically careful not to upset or offend each other. The child of their union turned out to be somewhat coddled and delicate, without the robustness of some of their earlier pieces. Gilbert would submit several versions of various songs and scenes to Sullivan and ask his opinion as to which was best - a thing he would never have done before. Much of the unused material still exists, not only alternative songs, but also extra ones which were subsequently deleted, probably before Sullivan had set them to music. In fact, The Gondoliers is an object lesson on how to build a rich musical fabric of graceful melodies around a rather thin and inconsequential plot - the essence of musical comedy. The collaborators were determined to create a play with no star parts and so Gilbert made nearly all the main characters of equal size, even rewriting scenes originally allocated to one character and giving them to another, when he felt that one character had too much and another too little to do. This is good musical comedy, but not necessarily good drama. For instance the scene in which the Duke teaches Marco & Giuseppe to dance a gavotte was originally designed to be a scene in which Don Alhambra teaches them to dance a minuet. There was on hand to play the Duke a man (Frank Wyatt) who could not sing, but who was a good actor, so Sullivan arranged the music so that it could be spoken in tune, not sung. When the Duke has to sing in concerted numbers, Sullivan structured the music so that the essential harmony is contained in the other parts, and the Duke can be as off-key and as out of tune as he likes without doing any serious damage. It may have been the instance of Frank Wyatt which prompted the impresario George Edwards to cast Joseph Coyne, a fine actor who couldn't sing either, as Danilo in the first English production of The Merry Widow. It worked, but when the composer, Lehar, found out, he nearly had a heart attack. In spite of the difference in Gilbert's approach to the writing of The Gondoliers, he imbued it with all the familiar stock characters, and Sullivan characterised their music appropriately. In his early opera, The Sorcerer, there was little difference between the music of the village girl Constance and the young lady Aline. In The Gondoliers on the other hand, the simple melodies of Gianetta contrast with the more refined music of Casilda. Don Alhambra has suitably pompous music, the Duchess belligerently furious music, and so on.

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