The Zoo

The Zoo is a one-act comic opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by B. C. Stephenson, writing under the pen name of Bolton Rowe.

The other couple is a young chemist who believes that he has poisoned his beloved by mixing up her father's prescription with peppermint that he had meant for her.

Just ten weeks before The Zoo opened, Trial by Jury premiered at the Royalty Theatre, with a libretto by Sullivan's more famous collaborator, W. S. Gilbert.

Sullivan had already written two operas with F. C. Burnand, and in late 1874 he had travelled to Paris to see one of Offenbach's librettists, Albert Millaud, although it is not known if anything came of that meeting.

For instance, Hughes writes, "Sullivan was so bitten by the stage bug that at the request of another manager he dashed off The Zoo, with a librettist whose identity it would be kinder not to reveal since he afterwards did good work under a nom-de-plume.

"[6] He notes that a 13 March 1875 gossip column in the Athenæum said that Sullivan was working on new music for a piece at the St. James's, although for a different opera.

He notes that Sullivan's sketch manuscript for Trial contains the first sixteen bars of a solo for the Usher that was deleted before the opera's premiere, called "His Lordship's always quits".

But because Sullivan entered only a bit of the tune in his sketch, Hulme concluded that the composer "needed only a few notes to remind him of his intentions.

"[9] The opera opened on 5 June 1875 at the St. James's Theatre in London under the management of Marie Litton, sharing the bill with a W. S. Gilbert comic play, Tom Cobb.

Terence Rees observed: The Zoo ran for three weeks until the end of Litton's season, then transferred to the Haymarket Theatre on 28 June 1875, and closed on 10 July 1875.

Its five-week run, between the two theatres, was not the hit that Trial by Jury had been, although Kurt Gänzl says that it "achieved a certain degree of success.

Allen quotes a letter of 22 June 1877, in which the composer wrote in the third person, "Mr. Sullivan begs to inform Mr. Cowper that the 'Zoo' has not yet been published, nor will it until considerable alterations have been made.

The final production of the piece during Sullivan's lifetime was at the Royalty Theatre from 14 April 1879 to 3 May 1879, with Lottie Venne as Eliza and W. S. Penley as Mr.

A professional production in the US was given by the Light Opera of Manhattan Off-Broadway in New York City in 1980 (together with Trial and Cox and Box), repeated in 1981.

[22] Other professional productions have been given in North America, most notably by the 1995 Shaw Festival in Canada, when it was given 92 performances over a period of five months.

In February 2009, the same company performed the opera at the Riverhouse Barn in London[25] and at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festivals in Buxton, England in each of 2009 and 2010.

They performed it again at the same Festival both in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and Buxton in 2011, as part of a triple bill with Trial and Cox,[26] which has become a popular grouping of an evening of Sullivan's one-act operas.

Now that his secret is discovered, Thomas makes a garbled but well-received speech and, taking the perceptive crowd's advice, resolves to propose marriage to Eliza as soon as he can change into his "native guise."

Still upset, Eliza laments that she is a simple little child who cannot understand why wealthy men have always showered her with gifts and invitations.

Failing at that, and after bidding Lætitia a lengthy farewell, he heads for the bear pit in the hopes of being killed by the fearsome creatures.

Thomas Brown re-enters, now dressed as befits the Duke of Islington, and he grandly proposes to make Eliza his Duchess.