PROGRAMME NOTE WRITTEN BY RACHEL KEEGAN FOR HATTON OPERATIC SOCIETY'S PRODUCTION OF "THE YEOMEN OF THE GUARD" IN MARCH 1997

A GENUINE ENGLISH OPERA?

The Yeomen of the Guard is generally regarded as the closest that Gilbert and Sullivan ever got to Grand Opera and it is therefore appropriate that in 1995 this was the first of the Savoy Operas to be staged at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

The Yeomen is the tenth of the thirteen surviving Savoy Operas, coming between Ruddigore and The Gondoliers in the sequence. It was written in 1887-88, at a time when relations between the composer and librettist were becoming increasingly strained. Gilbert thought that the serious nature of Sullivan's ghost music was largely to blame for the relative failure of Ruddigore. Sullivan wished to concentrate on his career as a serious composer and was irritated by Gilbert's repeated attempts to interest him in a plot about a lozenge with supernatural properties. For a while it seemed that the partnership had come to an end. Then, while Gilbert was waiting for a train at Uxbridge station, his eye was caught by a poster for the Tower Furnishing Company depicting a beefeater against a background of the Tower of London. The picturesque nature of the uniform appealed to him and he decided that the Tower of London would be a suitable setting for a new opera. Fortunately this idea was acceptable to Sullivan whose diary recorded that he was 'much relieved' that Gilbert had at long last given up the Lozenge plot.

The music was composed in a great rush and Sullivan is reported to have written the overture (one of his finest) in the auditorium during a final rehearsal, throwing the parts to the players in the orchestra as he completed them. Gilbert became increasingly concerned that the musical numbers at the beginning of the opera were too serious in character and delayed the comic element of his plot (by which he presumably meant the entrance of Jack Point and Elsie). At a rather stormy meeting just before the first performance on 3 October 1888, Sullivan agreed that a solo for Sergeant Meryll (' A Laughing Boy but Yesterday') could be cut (although it was left in for the first night only). The first draft of the script also had a solo for Shadbolt during his first scene with Phoebe, but this was discarded before the first night.

The Yeomen has fewer 'hit' songs than some of the earlier operas and the most well known song is probably the duet 'I have a Song to Sing O' Sullivan had particular difficulty with setting this song until Gilbert hummed the tune of a sea shanty which he said had been running through his head while he wrote the lyric. Sullivan later told Gilbert that 'It was the only time in your life that you wrote words and music'

The Lieutenant of the Tower has the distinction of being the only real historical figure to appear as a character in the Savoy Operas. The real Sir Richard Cholmondeley (pronounced 'Chumley') was Lieutenant of the Tower of London from 1513 to 1524. The action of the opera presumably takes place during Cholmondeley's lieutenancy, i.e. during the reign of Henry VIII.

The Yeomen is the only Gilbert & Sullivan opera to open with a solo rather than a chorus and the original Phoebe, Jessie Bond, had to cope with Gilbert's anxieties as well as her own first-night nerves (her diary records that Gilbert 'made himself a perfect nuisance behind the scenes'). The nervous Gilbert eventually disappeared to watch a play in another theatre, returning in time for the curtain calls.

He needn't have worried - the opera was rapturously received by the first night audience and went on to a respectable run of 423 performances. The critics were divided, and on the whole Sullivan fared better than Gilbert (who was accused of having copied the plot from the opera Maritana). The Daily Telegraph critic wrote that 'We place the songs and choruses in The Yeomen of the Guard before all his (Sullivan's) previous efforts of this particular kind. Thus the music follows the book to a higher plane and we have a genuine English opera, forerunner of many others, let us hope'. Since that first night there have been countless professional and amateur productions, including several outdoor productions at the Tower of London itself (in one of which Tommy Steele played the role of Jack Point and Leonard Meryll made his second act entrance on a white charger).

Sullivan died in 1900 and in 1905 a memorial was erected in the gardens near the Savoy Theatre. Gilbert wrote to Sullivan's nephew that he had heard that:

...you want a quotation from one of the libretti to inscribe on your uncle's bust. What do you say to this?

It is difficult to find anything quite fitted to so sad an occasion but I think that this might do.

Yours truly

W S Gilbert

© Rachel Keegan 1997