Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado; The Sorcerer

Gilbert & Sullivan (Artist), D'Oyly Carte Opera Company (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 15, 1993)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Pearl
• ASIN: B000000WMZ
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #272,539 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Overture [The Mikado, Act One]

2. If You Want to Know Who We Are

3. Gentlemen...A Wand'ring Minstrel I

4. Our Great Mikado

5. Young Man Despair

6. And Have I Journeyed for a Month

7. Behold the Lord High Executioner

8. As Someday It May Happen

9. Comes a Train...Three Little Maids

10. So Please You, Sir

See all 16 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Braid the Raven Hair [The Mikado, Act Two]

2. The Sun, Whose Rays

3. Brightly Dawns Our Wedding Day

4. Here's a How-De-Do

5. Mi-Ya Sa-Ma...From Every Kind of Man

6. A More Humane Mikado

7. The Criminal Cried

8. See How the Fates

9. The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring

10. Alone, and Yet Alive...Hearts Do Not Break

See all 27 tracks on this disc

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lytton a time capsule, November 7, 2000

By 

Peter Kline (Silver Spring, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado; The Sorcerer (Audio CD)

Sir Henry Lytton joined the D'Oyly Carte company with his wife as a chorus member in the original production of Princess Ida. In Ruddigore he skyrocketted to the top two weeks after the opening to take the part of Robin Oakapple when Grossmith fell sick. There can be no question that when we listen to him and his companions on this recording that we are hearing the style that Gilbert and Sullivan invented and wanted. It's one of the great losses to history that Lytton recorded only four G&S roles. But what we have shows how spontaneous and deeply charactered performances were earlier in the last century. True, musical values were often sacrificed to dramatic and comic ones, but if you want the spirit of G & S as it was originally conceived, you'll find more of it here than on any recording in stereo. This is true of George Baker in The Sorcerer as well. He's at the opposite extreme interpretively from Lytton, but, though he was never a member of the company he knew the style very well, and had one of the longest recording careers in history, ranging from accoustical recordings to stereo. Melt Lytton and Baker together and take off the scum and the G&S style is the residuum.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best Gilbert and Sullivan recordings ever!, May 25, 1999

By 

Dafydd Mac an Leigh (Waltham, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado; The Sorcerer (Audio CD)

The 1926 Mikado is, historically, one of the most important records to G&S history. This was the first electrical Savoyard recording, and features several people personally familiar with the authors and thier designs on their most popular opera. The chorus is very clean, with better balance than on many modern recordings. The principal singing is terrific, from Elsie Griffin's sweet and capable Yum-Yum to Darrell Fancourt, inventor of the Mikado's blood-curdling laughs in "My Object All Sublime". Bertha Lewis is a mighty powerful Katasha, and Leo Sheffield's effortlessly condescending Pooh-Bah proves a worthy successor to Rutland Barrington, the original. (Both Lewis and Sheffield, incidentally, had joined the D'Oyly Carte Company early enough in the century to have learned their parts from Gilbert himself.) But the undeniable star is the Ko-Ko of Sir Henry Lytton, the last remaining Savoyard who worked under both authors. Though already about sixty, his wit and nuance are still apparent - and wonderful. The recording was directed and supervised by the hand-picked successors to Gilbert and D'Oyly Carte, and every effort was made to preserve the authors' original intentions, making this the closest to what Gilbert and Sullivan had in mind as we're likely to get. The accompanying Sorcerer Highlights - the complete score not recorded until the fifties - makes a nice companion piece, showing how underrated an opera it really is. Pearl's restoration is clean, brilliant, and gives minimal record-crackle. Don't fear this record because of it's age - the perfomance, like the opera is timeless.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars this is a correction, not a review, January 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado; The Sorcerer (Audio CD)

You might wish to know that the Sorcerer part of this set is an abridged version and not the complete score. Do you agree that some mention should be made of this fact along with the price and so on?