Richard D'Oyly Carte

He built two of London's theatres and a hotel empire, while also establishing an opera company that ran continuously for over a hundred years and a management agency representing some of the most important artists of the day.

Carte believed that a school of wholesome, well-crafted, family-friendly, English comic opera could be as popular as the risqué French works dominating the London musical stage in the 1870s.

Nevertheless, his partnership with Gilbert and Sullivan, and his careful management of their operas and relationship, created a series of works whose success was unprecedented in the history of musical theatre.

His opera company, later run by his widow Helen and then by his son, Rupert, and granddaughter, Bridget, promoted those works for more than a century, and they are still performed regularly today.

In January 1861, he achieved First Class level in the matriculation examination for University College London,[14] but did not take up the place; in deference to his parents' wishes he joined his father's business, along with his brother, Henry.

[12] Between 1868 and 1877, Carte wrote and published the music for several of his own songs and instrumental works,[n 4] as well as three short comic operas: Doctor Ambrosias – His Secret (1868),[n 5] Marie (1871),[n 6] and Happy Hampstead (1876).

[n 7] On tour in 1871 he conducted Cox and Box by Arthur Sullivan and F. C. Burnand, in tandem with English adaptations of two one-act pieces by Offenbach, The Rose of Auvergne and Breaking the Spell, in which Carte's client Selina Dolaro starred.

[13][26] His two hundred clients eventually included Charles Gounod, Jacques Offenbach, Adelina Patti, Mario, Clara Schumann, Antoinette Sterling, Edward Lloyd, Mr. and Mrs. German Reed, George Grossmith, Matthew Arnold, James McNeill Whistler and Oscar Wilde.

"[33] In 1874, Carte leased the Opera Comique, a theatre off the Strand, where he presented Charles Lecocq's new opéra bouffe Giroflé-Girofla, given in French by the company who had premiered the work three months earlier in Brussels.

[37] Carte later said it was "the scheme of my life" to found a school of high-quality, family-friendly English comic opera,[38] in contrast to the crude burlesques and adaptations of French operettas that dominated the London musical stage at that time.

[48] In February 1877 Carte, organising a company for a provincial tour of a successful London farce, auditioned a novice actress called Helen Lenoir.

[8][52] The first comic opera produced by the new company was Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer in 1877, with a plot involving a tradesmanlike London magician and his patented love potion.

It opened to great enthusiasm but within days of the premiere London experienced an unusually strong and protracted heat wave,[55] and business in the ill-ventilated Opera Comique was badly affected.

[57] After promotional efforts by Carte and Sullivan, who programmed some of the Pinafore music when he conducted a season of promenade concerts at Covent Garden, the opera became a hit.

[1] On 31 July 1879, the last day of their agreement with Carte, the directors of the Comedy Opera Company attempted to repossess the Pinafore set by force during a performance, causing a celebrated fracas.

[69] To try to counter this copyright piracy and make some money from the popularity of their opera in America, Carte travelled to New York with the authors and the company to present an "authentic" production of Pinafore, beginning in December 1879, as well as American tours.

[70] Lenoir made fifteen visits to America in the 1880s and 1890s to promote Carte's interests, superintending arrangements for American productions and tours of each of the new Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

[72][73] In an effort to head off unauthorised American productions of their next opera, The Pirates of Penzance, Carte and his partners opened it in New York on 31 December 1879, prior to its 1880 London premiere.

[76] To secure the British copyright, Lenoir arranged an ad hoc performance at the Royal Bijou Theatre, Paignton, Devon, by the smaller of Carte's two Pinafore touring companies, the afternoon before the New York premiere.

[79] To popularise the opera in America, in 1882 Carte sent one of the artistes under his management, the young poet Oscar Wilde, on a lecture tour to explain to Americans what the aesthetic movement was about.

[82] With profits from the Gilbert and Sullivan operas and his concert and lecture agency, he bought property along the Strand in 1880 with frontage onto the Thames Embankment, where he built the Savoy Theatre in 1881.

[89] In the 1890s, under its famous manager, César Ritz, and chef Auguste Escoffier, it became a well-known luxury hotel and would generate more income and contribute more to the D'Oyly Carte fortunes than any other enterprise, including the opera companies.

"[95] Cellier and Bridgeman attributed the rise in quality and reputation of the amateur groups largely to "the popularity of, and infectious craze for performing, the Gilbert and Sullivan operas".

[97] Sullivan had not intended to immediately write a new work with Gilbert, but he suffered a serious financial loss when his stockbroker went bankrupt in November 1882 and felt the long-term contract necessary for his security.

[106] Carte produced the first revival of The Sorcerer, together with Trial by Jury, and matinees of The Pirates of Penzance played by a cast of children, while he waited for his partners to finish writing the new work.

"[118] The quality of Carte's productions created a national and international taste for them, and he sent touring companies throughout the British provinces, to America (generally managed by Helen), Europe[1] and elsewhere.

[n 13] Bernard Shaw, writing in The World in October 1893, said: Those who are old enough to compare the Savoy performances with those of the dark ages, taking into account the pictorial treatment of the fabrics and colors on the stage, the cultivation and intelligence of the choristers, the quality of the orchestra, and the degree of artistic good breeding, so to speak, expected from the principals, best know how great an advance has been made by Mr. D'Oyly Carte.

[126] At the Savoy, Carte produced His Majesty (1897), The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein (1897), The Beauty Stone (1898) and The Lucky Star (1899), as well as revivals of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

[1][152] Carte was instrumental in bringing the British theatre from its low status in the mid-Victorian age to a position of respectable eminence, with knighthoods for actors, such as Henry Irving, and for dramatists, including Gilbert.

"[154] In Carte's obituary, The Times noted, "By his refined taste he raised the reputation of the mise en scène of the Savoy operas to a very high pitch.