Yeoman of the Guard/Patience [Import, Original recording remastered, Soundtrack]

Gilbert & Sullivan (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 7, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 4
• Format: Import, Original recording remastered, Soundtrack
• Label: Castle/Pulse
• ASIN: B00008BXGM
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #509,491 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Overture (The Yeomen Of The Guard)

2. When Maiden Loves She Sits And Sighs

3. Tower Warders Under Orders

4. When Our Gallant Norman Foes

5. Alas I Waver To And Fro

6. Is Life A Boon

7. Heres A Man Of Jollity

8. I Have A Song To Sing

9. How Say You Maiden Will You Wed

10. Ive Jibe And Joke

11. Til Done I Am A Bride

12. Were I Thy Bride

13. Oh Sergeant Meryll Is It True

14. Forbear My Friends

15. Aye Hug Him Girl

16. The Prisner Comes To Meet His Doom

17. My Lord My Lord I Know Not How To Tell

18. Night Has Spead Her Pall Once More

19. Oh A Private Buffoon Is A Light Hearted Loon

20. Hereupon Were Both Agreed

See all 56 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

A must for the hundreds of thousands of Gilbert & Sullivan fans. Fabulous historic recordings under the personal supervision of Rupert D'Oyly Carte. Remastered for best possible sound quality. Conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. Discs one & two, 'The Yeoman Of The Guard', were recorded in 1928 & discs three & four, 'Patience', were recorded in 1930. Standard jewelcases housed in a slipcase. Castle Pulse. 2003.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great G&S re-issues at rock-bottom price, March 3, 2005

By 

L. E. Cantrell (Vancouver, British Columbia Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Yeoman of the Guard/Patience (Audio CD)

Source: The first electronic recordings of "The Yeomen of the Guard" (1928) and "Patience" (1930). The comic operas would originally have been issued in albums of about twenty-four sides, each.

Sound: Amazingly good mono, considering the great age of the performances, and not so very different from some first-generation LPs. There is some low but easy-to-ignore hiss that probably appeared in the original matrices, and moments of overloading on a few of the biggest ensembles. The voices of the soloists are very well captured. The choruses sound fine, although a little distant and slightly compressed. If the orchestra seems a bit confined by digital era standards, the sound is nevertheless good and full of detail. The CD tracks tend to follow the three-and-a-half minute takes of the original 78s. Reflecting the original sides, there is often, but not always, a brief roll-off into dead silence at the end of a number before the next begins. This edition seems to be a direct transfer of original sides with little or no remastering. In at least one place in the first act finale of "Yeomen," a couple of orchestral bars that served to make a neat end to one side were repeated to start up the following side. The repeat is carried onto the CD.

Microphone placement was still at a rough and ready stage in those long-ago early electronic days. In the first act finale of "Patience," the mike must have been right in front of the tenor, for the massive concerted ensemble assumes the character of a tenor solo with choral accompaniment.

Text: No dialogue. The performing text and the order of pieces is that established by W. S. Gilbert and used on stage by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company throughout most of the 20th Century. In "Yeomen" that means that the Second Yeoman is the first male soloist to sing and that the First Yeoman does not utter a word until the first act finale. In accordance with D'Oyly Carte performing practice at the date of the recording, the duet, "Rapture, Rapture," is present, although it would be omitted in the stage performances of the immediately following decades. I haven't consulted the score, but I think that the only omission in "Patience" is a fanfare that comes just before the second act finale.

Format: Four discs, with two disks per opera, one for each act. Each disk is in its own plastic case and all four cases are boxed together. I found this such a space waster that I went out and spent a buck for a pair of double cases and repackaged the disks on the day after they arrived.

Documentation: This is very much a barebones, cookie-free re-issue. No libretto. Cast list. Single page summary of the plot of each act. The accompanying documentation fails to identify some soloists. They are Walter Glynne and L. Gowings as the First Yeoman and Henry Millidge as the Second Yeoman.

These two comic operas were recorded at the transition point between the ends of the performing careers of the second generation of Savoyards, some of whom had been directed by W. S. Gilbert, himself, and the beginning of the third. Sir Henry Lytton--imagine, being knighted for doing G&S!--the chief comedy man who had been performing since the 1880s, was still with the company but on his way out. HMV did not care for the way his rather high-pitched voice recorded, so he did not record either Jack Point in "Yeomen" or Bunthorne in "Patience." His place was taken in the studio by the articulate and stronger-voiced George Baker, who was never a regular member of the D'Oyly Carte Company. (Lytton's great successor, the incomparable Martyn Greene, was already on hand, though, singing the small part of the Major in "Patience.") More than thirty years after these recordings were made, Baker would be back before the microphones, recording many of the comic patter parts for Sir Malcolm Sargent's stereo G&S series.

These recordings were made under the personal supervision of Rupert D'Oyly Carte, whose father, Richard, had founded the opera company and been a partner with Gilbert (stormily) and Sullivan (happily). His step-mother, Helen, had succeeded to control of the company, and his daughter, Bridget, would continue to run it with a whim of iron well past the middle of the 20th Century. Rupert must have been a pretty odd duck, since P. G. Wodehouse, a schoolmate, always insisted that he was the model for PGW's first great fictional character, the remarkable Psmith (pronounced "Smith.") Whatever the eccentricities of the D'Oyly Cartes, this early series of recordings must be regarded as definitive in setting out the core of English G&S performance tradition.

These performances of "The Yeomen of the Guard" and "Patience" have the virtues of all D'Oyly Carte Company recordings: excellent, rigidly disciplined choruses and soloists with superb English diction. Alas, the soloists also suffer from the curse of English vocal training.

George Baker is quite good but somewhat generic in his assumption of the two leading comic roles. Being accustomed to Baker the elder statesman in the stereo sets of the 1960s, I found it enlightening to hear the strong and youthful Baker of the 1930s. If anything, he sounds too strong, even robust, for poor, disappointed, delicate Jack Point in "Yeomen."

It is given wisdom among many hardcore G&S fans that Derek Oldham was the best tenor who ever recorded a Savoy opera. Don't believe them. Oldham was all right, and better overall than his D'Oyly Carte Company successors of the 1960s and later, but the finest actor ever to take the lead tenor parts was Oldham's immediate successor, Leonard Osborn, and the finest singer was probably Richard Lewis, who recorded in Sargent's stereo series. Oldham is passable as the Duke of Dunstable in "Patience," and better as Colonel Fairfax in "Yeomen."

Bertha Lewis was a classic English hooting contralto. Gilbert was notorious for making unkind fun of middle-aged, hefty women--the parts she normally played. As Lady Jane in "Patience," she is subjected to Gilbert's heaviest bombardment, but through Sullivan's music, Katisha-like, she rises triumphant over all.

The other soloists are very, very British--markedly more so than their counterparts in later years.

Malcolm Sargent, in this younger and more lively iteration, leads the orchestra in both recordings, just as he would more than thirty years later, when he labored ponderously under the heavy weight of his knighthood. In 1928 and 1930, he was rhythmically sensitive and did a fine job keeping things moving.

This set presents two G&S comic opera masterpieces at a rock-bottom price. They offer surprisingly good sound and first-class performances, all my nitpicking to the contrary. It is a must-have for a serious lover of G&S. For those of you who care about performance quality, it's a steal! For the rest of you who must have DDD sound or suffer the vapors, walk away, this is not for you.

Five stars, no question about it.