Henry Lytton
The D'Oyly Carte company left the Savoy Theatre in 1903, and Lytton appeared in half a dozen West End musical comedies over the next four years, including The Earl and the Girl, The Spring Chicken and The Little Michus.
[5] In 1881 Lytton made his first appearance on the professional stage at the Philharmonic Theatre, Islington, in the comic opera A Trip to China, or The Obstinate Bretons, in the cast of which was his future wife, Louie Henri, daughter of William Webber, of London.
[27][n 5] From April 1887 Lytton played Robin in his own right in two of Carte's touring companies, the first performing in medium-sized towns and the second in the major provincial cities.
[31] On tour Lytton gradually added to his repertoire the comic patter roles in many of the other Gilbert and Sullivan operas, beginning with Sir Joseph Porter in H.M.S.
[34] The creator of the role, Grossmith, was celebrated as a comic performer and did not emphasise the tragic side of the part; both Lytton and his colleague George Thorne in another touring company did so, portraying Point's collapse at the end as fatal.
[38] In the first provincial production of Utopia, Limited (1893) he played King Paramount – the main baritone part – created at the Savoy by Rutland Barrington.
[43] During them he also appeared in Savoy operas by librettists or composers other than Gilbert and Sullivan, playing the title role in The Vicar of Bray (1892),[44] Flapper in Billie Taylor (1893: "Mr Henry A. Lytton scored immensely by his clever impersonation of Captain the Hon.
He was an emergency replacement for Grossmith who had returned to the Savoy after nine years to star in the piece, but had withdrawn from the production in the first week of the run, pleading ill health.
After His Majesty closed, Lytton remained in the Savoy company – joined the following year by his wife – playing a wide range of other baritone roles, from comic to romantic and serious.
[48] His only patter role during this period was Major General Stanley in a revival of The Pirates of Penzance (1900), in which Passmore took the part of the Sergeant of Police.
[50] Between 1897 and 1903 Lytton's Gilbert and Sullivan roles at the Savoy were Wilfred Shadbolt in The Yeomen of the Guard, Giuseppe in The Gondoliers, the Learned Judge in Trial by Jury, Dr Daly in The Sorcerer, Captain Corcoran in H.M.S.
[51] In operas not by Gilbert and Sullivan he created nine roles: Prince Paul in The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein (1897), Simon Limal in The Beauty Stone (1898), Baron Tabasco in The Lucky Star (1899), Sultan Mahmoud in The Rose of Persia (1899), Charlie Brown in the curtain raiser Pretty Polly (1899), Ib's Father in Ib and Little Christina (1901), Pat Murphy in The Emerald Isle (1901), the Earl of Essex in Merrie England (1902), and William Jelf in A Princess of Kensington (1903).
[54] A second investment later in the year, in Melnotte, an operatic version of the comedy The Lady of Lyons, also lost money, after which Lytton abandoned thoughts of being an impresario.
[57] Many of the former Savoy company, including Isabel Jay, Robert Evett, Barrington, Passmore and Lytton continued to appear in the West End in musical comedies, many of which had long runs.
[58] Between 1903 and 1907 Lytton appeared in West End productions by William Greet, George Edwardes, Seymour Hicks and Frank Curzon, starring in The Earl and the Girl and as the Real Soldier in Little Hans Andersen (both 1903, alongside Passmore);[59] as Reggie in The Talk of the Town (1905, also with Passmore);[60] Aristide in The Little Michus (1905, with Evett);[61] Reginald in The White Chrysanthemum (1905, with Barrington and Jay);[62] Boniface in The Spring Chicken (1905); and Jack in My Darling (1907).
In 1904 he wrote the libretto for a one-act operetta, The Knights of the Road, set to music by Sir Alexander MacKenzie, which was well received at its premiere at the Palace Theatre of Varieties in February 1905.
[67] Lytton wrote that greatly as he enjoyed, and profited from, his musical comedy roles, he found them shallow and superficial compared with the Savoy Operas, to which he was glad to return in 1907.
[n 7] At the end of the season Workman left to pursue a career as an actor-manager;[n 8] Lytton took over the patter roles in the touring company, in which his fellow principals included Fred Billington, Clara Dow, Sydney Granville, Louie René and Leicester Tunks.
[77][78] Lytton approved of the new costumes commissioned by Carte,[79] but strongly disapproved of, and battled against, the brisk tempi imposed by Malcolm Sargent, the young conductor brought in as musical director for the London seasons of 1926 and 1929–30.
[83] In May the following year Lytton, driving in heavy rain, crashed his car; his passenger, his fellow D'Oyly Carte principal Bertha Lewis, was killed, and he was injured.
[n 9] After retiring from the D'Oyly Carte company Lytton made his last stage appearance, as the Emperor of China in Aladdin, the Christmas pantomime at the Prince of Wales Theatre, Birmingham in 1934–35.
As early as 1902–03 the Gramophone Company (HMV) was promoting him as one of its stars along with performers ranging from Enrico Caruso, Edvard Grieg and Joseph Joachim to Dan Leno, Marie Lloyd and George Robey.
[99] By the time HMV began using D'Oyly Carte principals in its recordings of the Savoy operas in the mid-1920s, Lytton's voice was not thought suitable for the gramophone, and he was included in only Princess Ida in 1924 (acoustic) and 1932 (electrical), The Mikado in 1926, The Gondoliers in 1927, and H.M.S.
Pinafore was released, Cardus wrote in The Manchester Guardian, "It was high time something was done to send down to posterity the genius of the greatest of all surviving artists in Gilbert and Sullivan.
[101] Lytton sang Ko-Ko in a 1926 BBC radio broadcast of two half-hour excerpts from The Mikado,[102] and appeared in the same role in a four-minute-long silent promotional film for the D'Oyly Carte production in the same year.
