Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado

John Cameron (Performer), Geraint Evans (Performer), Ian Wallace (Performer), Arthur Sullivan (Composer), Peter Gellhorn (Conductor), Malcolm Sargent (Conductor), Glyndebourne Festival Chorus (Orchestra), Pro Arte Orchestra (Orchestra), Elsie Morison (Performer), Jeannette Sinclair (Performer), Richard Lewis (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: John Cameron, Geraint Evans, Ian Wallace, Elsie Morison, Jeannette Sinclair, et al.
• Orchestra: Glyndebourne Festival Chorus, Pro Arte Orchestra
• Conductor: Peter Gellhorn, Malcolm Sargent
• Composer: Arthur Sullivan
• Audio CD (February 16, 1993)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: EMI Classics
• ASIN: B000002S3U
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #182,693 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Likely to please Sullivan more than Gilbert., April 12, 2001

By 

John Austin "[e-mail]" (Kangaroo Ground, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado (Audio CD)

This is the "Mikado" to go for if you want to savour the beauty, felicity and finesse of Sullivan's music. If you want a full theatrical production reproduced from your loud speakers, then look elsewhere.

It is the first of a series of recordings of G & S operas produced in the late 1950s and early 1960s by EMI. Sir Malcolm Sargent, engaged for a similar recording venture 30 years earlier, was again engaged as conductor. The singers (two of them Australians) were selected because they could sing, not because they could act or had previous experience in G & S live productions.

The result? Well, it always pleases me, and I suspect it would please Sullivan too. Sargent's tempos tend to be slower than is customary, but are never leaden-footed. Richard Lewis, from his opening question, proclaims himself as the lyrical, mellifluous tenor you'll want to keep singing to you forever (even if he becomes the next Mikado). Owen Brannigan has a high old time as the present Mikado. Elsie Morison is especially fine at the beginning of Act 2, as is Monica Sinclair in her duet with Ko-Ko. It is a pleasure to hear even the bit parts sung rather than mouthed.

Gilbert may not have valued singers who can sing, but if you do, and you are aware that Sullivan's music repays worthy attention, then this is the "Mikado" for you.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Tale of Two Sargents, November 3, 2005

By 

L. E. Cantrell (Vancouver, British Columbia Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado (Audio CD)

This is the recording of "The Mikado" to get if you are primarily interested in Sullivan's orchestral music. There are those who would cavil at that statement, citing the fact that he did not write the overture. For them, I shall point out that although Sullivan did not write every bar, being habitually late in the drudge work of composing, he certainly laid out the order of tunes, outlined the instrumentation, assigned the task to a friend well-acquainted with his style, and fine-tuned the piece during the rehearsals for the opening night, which he conducted. As for the rest of the comic opera, that is almost entirely in his own hand.

This 1957 recording was the first of a series of stereo G&S recordings issued by EMI. The cast was hand-picked from the luminaries of the English operatic stage. The idea was to enhance and illuminate the comic operas with the finest native English singers. Like many brilliant schemes, it just did not work. The worst clunker of the bunch was the most famous of the lot, Geraint Evans. His problem was that he did not become Ko-Ko, he remained an opera singer who was singing Ko-Ko. (His reviews were so bad that he quickly dropped out of the series. He did not want to become identified as a Gilbert and Sullivan singer, he said. He had NOTHING to fear on that matter!) The same was true of the Pish-Tush, Pooh-Bah and the Mikado. Not one of the four managed to characterize his part. Any one was interchangeable with any other. (For that Amazon reviewer who was so taken with the Pish-Tush, I suggest that a comparison with George Baker in the earlier Sargent recording might prove a revelation.) Richard Lewis, was unquestionably the finest tenor ever to record Nanki-Poo. But he was far from being the finest performer of the rôle. That distinction belongs either to Leonard Osborn (1950) or to Derek Oldham (1928). The Three Little Maids and Katisha were all fine without being in any way extraordinary.

Much of the commentary in these Amazon reviews has been concerned with the slow tempos chosen by Sir Malcolm Sargent in this series. I am one who feels that he is too slow--not disastrously so, mind you, but still not right. For evidence in support of my position, I would call upon a gentleman of great musical knowledge and impeccable G&S credentials, Dr. Malcolm Sargent of 1928.

Beginning in 1926, HMV issued a series of G&S recordings in the very latest technological medium, electronic recordings on 78 rpm discs, roughly twenty-two sides per show. They were offered on sale in the United States for about $13, a very, very stiff price. The first two, "Trial by Jury" and "The Gondoliers" were conducted by the undistinguished Harry Norris. Thereafter, the series was given over to the much more prestigious Dr. Sargent. Although many D'Oyly Carte Company regulars appeared on the HMV sets, they were not quite D'Oyly Carte Company recordings, for HMV house singers were cast in various parts. For marketing purposes, however, they were boldly marked as being "under the supervision of Rupert D'Oyly Carte." (Rupert was the third head of the family firm created by his father, Richard D'Oyly Carte and continued by his step-mother, Helen Lenoir D'Oyly Carte. His daughter, Bridget, succeeded him and headed the company until it was murdered by the penny-pinching government of Maggie Thatcher.) A well-known tale is that D'Oyly Carte and Sargent butted heads over the 1928 "Mikado." Rupert objected to the tempos chosen by Sargent because they were simply too fast for any practical staging. Malcolm quite logically pointed out that he was conducting a recording, not a stage production. Dr. Sargent carried the day.

The 1928 "Mikado" clocks in at about 84 minutes--against 90 minutes for the 1957 version. It is a highly satisfying performance with every syllable from the fully characterized and clearly individualized principal singers precisely articulated. Almost thirty years later, Sargent seems to have labored under the burdensome weight of his knighthood. In every variant reading, the lugubrious older Sargent is wrong and the sprightly younger Sargent is right.

As for the missing dialogue, feel free to regard that as a fatal omission or as a welcome relief as you see fit.

On the whole, this is very likely the most musical rendering of "The Mikado" on CD. It is, however, far from being the best performance.

Four stars.

WARNING FOR THE EASILY SHOCKED: The 1928 version, as might be expected, contained historically accurate but distinctly non-PC epithets in both Ko-Ko's "Little List" song and the Mikado's "Punishment Fit the Crime" number. Quite to my surprise, I find that the words were still in Sargent's 1957 version.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Three problems here, September 27, 1999

By 

F. Behrens "Frank Behrens" (Keene, NH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado (Audio CD)

There are three problems with this MIKADO. (1)The Ko-Ko is very well sung but badly miscast in that the voice is far too heavy and serious for the role. (2) The Pooh-Bah is far too light-voiced for a role that calls for a basso-profundo. (3) The relatively short score is spread across 2 CDs with nary a filler to make it more attractive economically. Telarc fits the entire score (minus the overture and a stanza of the Little List Song) onto a single CD, while another EMI version gives a generous helping of IOLANTHE to fill up the second disc. A very fine cast otherwise with operatic voices that do not at all hurt Sullivan's music. Sound is of course state of art for back then, not now.