The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan [Paperback]

William Schwenck Gilbert (Author), Arthur Seymour Sullivan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 1997

From Trial by Jury to The Pirates of Penzance: the complete librettos of all fourteen Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

Gilbert's verses for Sullivan's music are the most fastidiously turned and inventively rhymed in all lyric comedy. As the Savoy Operas enter their second century on a swell of renewed popularity, Gilbert's reputation as the supreme wordsmith of light opera remains secure.

Complete and authentic, these are the librettos on which modern performances and recordings are based. Scattered among the songs are over seventy of the amusing, quirky pictures Gilbert drew to illustrate them. A chronology prepared for this edition sketches the authors' lives and careers. This is a book that no lover of Gilbert and Sullivan, musical comedy, or indeed the English theater will want to be without.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

From Thespis to The Grand Duke, here are all the words to all the operettas on which William Schenk Gilbert and Arthur Seymour Sullivan collaborated. A fixture in Anglo-American music theater and humor for well over a century, their wit retains its edge after all these years. Norton offers the libretti available in handy, totable book form and generously illustrates them with Gilbert's accomplished pen-and-ink drawings. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, KBE, was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator, best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado.

Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan, MVO, was an English composer, of Irish and Italian descent, best known for his operatic collaborations with librettist Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, including such continually popular works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado. Sullivan's artistic output included 23 operas, 13 major orchestral works, eight choral works and oratorios, two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous hymns and other church pieces, songs, parlour ballads, part songs, carols, and piano and chamber pieces.

Product Details

• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (September 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393316882
• ISBN-13: 978-0393316889
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #743,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Imperfect but a good investment, April 22, 2005

By 

Pitti-Sing (Titipu, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan (Paperback)

I invested in this book intending to listen to and memorize all fourteen of the Savoy operas...I now know ten of them practically from heart, which scares my friends terribly. The funny thing is that, although I intended to buy it solely so that I could sing the words to Sullivan's wonderful hummable tunes, I found myself reading the plays just for the pleasure of Gilbert's clever rymes and horribly improbable plotlines. His "Bab" illustrations are also included beside the text, which opens up another side of Gilbert's genius. But be forewarned: There are several mistakes in the text - mostly words such as "is" being replaced with "it," but also some words that are different. Perhaps the words have changed over time from the origonal texts, but once in a while you'll find a word sung differently than what's written. I treat the book like I'd treat an edition of Shakespeare - dramatic work is always bent and changed slightly. In spite of the minor textual mistakes, it is a very useful book and it's nice to have the libretto laid out without any commentary or annotations.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I Still remember My Mother's Old 78's, June 15, 2000

By 

Loren D. Morrison "amateur_reviewer" (Los Angeles County, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan (Paperback)

Back in prehistoric times when records were brittle things and only came in one speed, 78 RPM's, one of my mother's favorite albums was "H.M.S. Pinafore." She played it frequently. Too young to understand the satire, I was attracted by the catchy music. I loved to hear the captain sing "I am the Captain of the Pinafore," immediately followed by the response of the chorus. This plus "Poor Little Buttercup" and "The Ruler of the Queen's Navee" made a fan of me for life.

Several years later, and after having attended performances of several of these comic operas, I began to read Gilbert's lyrics. I must confess that I got much greater enjoyment out of reading lyrics that were from Gilbert and Sullivan performances that I had attended. I think that must be because neither the words nor the music are nearly as enjoyable in the absence of the other.

I have read that Gilbert and Sullivan had a very stormy relationship. I'm glad that they managed to work together as often as they did because they really complemented one another. What they accomplished as a team speaks for itself in the continued performance of so many of their works over a hundred years after they were first performed.

I have an older hardback of THE COMPLETE PLAYS and I found some humor in the following which may have been corrected in later copies. The book starts off with Chronological Biographies of each man. In Gilbert's it states< "first meeting with Arthur Sullivan autumn of 1870." In Sullivan's we find the following. "Met W. S. Gilbert 1871." Something metaphysical afoot perhaps.

In summary, in my opinion, the works in this book, while certainly enjoyable reading, were really meant to be performed in order to give maximum enjoyment. Others may very well disagree with this opinion and I see nothing wrong with that.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A most excellant book, December 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan (Paperback)

This book is full of musical plays and the scripts are worded well for possible performance. The only problem is that the sheet music is missing and from experience it is a headache to find but other than that it is a good book that stimulates the imagination.