THE GILBERT AND SULLIVAN STORY - SLIDE SET

The set comprises 196 black and white slides of photographs and other archive material associated with Gilbert & Sullivan, for example:

• Photographs and caricatures of Gilbert, Sullivan and D'Oyly Carte and their relatives
• Photographs of other people who feature in the story (for example Gladstone, Queen Victoria)
• Photographs or drawings of locations associated with G&S
• Posters or programmes for the original productions
• Gilbert's 'Bab' illustrations

For the excerpts from the operas, the original idea was to find drawings of the original set designs but the D'Oyly Carte Trust were unable to help with this. Photography was in its infancy in the 1870s and 80s and when newspapers of the time (like ‘The Graphic’) reported on the first night of a new opera, they sent along an artist to make sketches. Unfortunately, although these often included an excellent drawing of the main scene, it was usually surrounded with vignettes of the various characters as can be seen in the examples of Iolanthe and Yeomen shown below. To get a usable slide, this extraneous detail had to be removed as shown. Other operas were covered by photographs of the sets designed around the 1920s.

Yeomen - original	Yeomen - slide
Iolanthe - original	Iolanthe - slide

An illustrated slide plot and details of the hire charges for the slides can be obtained from Rachel Keegan 

Page written by Rachel Keegan
Last updated: 1 January 2002