Thespis (opera)

[4] The story follows an acting troupe headed by Thespis, the legendary Greek father of the drama, who temporarily trade places with the gods on Mount Olympus, who have grown elderly and ignored.

Gilbert would return to this theme twenty-five years later in his last opera with Sullivan, The Grand Duke, in which a theatre company temporarily replaces the ruler of a small country and decides to "revive the classic memories of Athens at its best".

The Ballet Master was W. H. Payne[10] Impresario and author John Hollingshead, the lessee of London's Gaiety Theatre since 1868, had produced a number of successful musical burlesques and operettas there.

[16] By late September or early October 1871, Gaiety programmes announced that "The Christmas Operatic Extravaganza will be written by W. S. Gilbert, with original music by Arthur Sullivan.

Lastly, Thespis was to play as the afterpiece to an H. J. Byron comedy, Dearer than Life, which shared many of its actors, including Toole and Fred Sullivan, and had to be rehearsed at the same time.

'[37]The première was under rehearsed, as several critics noted, and the work was also evidently in need of cutting: Gaiety management had advised that carriages should be called for 11:00 p.m., but Thespis was still playing past midnight.

"[35] The Morning Advertiser found it "a dreary, tedious two-act rigmarole of a plot... grotesque without wit, and the music thin without liveliness... however, not entirely devoid of melody....

The Illustrated Times wrote: It is terribly severe on Mr. W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, the joint authors of Thespis, that their work was produced in such a crude and unsatisfactory state.

Unless I am very much mistaken, and despite the hisses of Boxing-Night... the ballads and wit of Mr. Gilbert [and] the pretty strains of Mr. Arthur Sullivan... will carry Thespis through and make it—as it deserves to be—the most praiseworthy piece of the Christmas season.

[42]Clement Scott, writing in the Daily Telegraph, had a mostly favourable reaction: Possibly a holiday audience is disinclined to dive into the mysteries of heathen mythology, and does not care to exercise the requisite intellect to unravel an amusing, and by no means intricate, plot.... Certain it is, however, that the greeting which awaited Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old, was not so cordial as might have been expected.

The story, written by Mr. W. S. Gilbert in his liveliest manner, is so original, and the music contributed by Mr. Arthur Sullivan so pretty and fascinating, that we are inclined to be disappointed when we find the applause fitful, the laughter scarcely spontaneous, and the curtain falling not without sounds of disapprobation.

Reporting on the opera's third night, a letter in the London Figaro stated: "[N]ot a single hitch in the performance is now to be perceived, and ... the applause and evident delight of the audience from beginning to end ... fully endorses the opinion of the Telegraph critic".

Instead, a "miscellaneous entertainment" was given at the Gaiety, consisting of ventriloquists, performing dogs and, coincidentally, a sketch parodying a penny reading by the young George Grossmith, who, several years later, became Gilbert and Sullivan's principal comedian.

[59] Another possible explanation is that Gilbert and Sullivan came to regard Thespis, with its "brazen girls in tights and short skirts",[60] and broad burlesque-style humour, as "the kind of work they wished to avoid".

[65] Rees also prepared a performance version, based on the libretto, which included a few interpolated lyrics from Gilbert's non-Sullivan operas in an attempt to replace the missing songs.

[69] In 2008, a Sullivan pastiche score (with some Offenbach added), arranged by Timothy Henty, was first used with Gilbert's libretto adapted by Anthony Baker, at the Normansfield Theatre in Teddington, Middlesex, England,[70] the first professional British production since 1872.

[72] Also in 2008, an original score by Thomas Z. Shepard was first performed in concert by the Blue Hill Troupe in New York City[73] and was finally given a fully staged amateur production in 2014.

François Cellier recalled much later: I retain a dim recollection of witnessing the piece and being impressed with the freshness of Gilbert's libretto, especially as regards the lyrics, which were, indeed, a treat to read after the vapid, futile jingle of rhymes without reason which had hitherto passed muster on those degenerate days.

The Times wrote: "The dialogue throughout is superior in ability and point to that with which ordinary burlesque and extravaganza have familiarized us; so much so, in fact, that it was a daring experiment to produce such a piece on such a night.

It met, however, with an excellent reception, and on any other occasion than Boxing Night the numerous merits of the piece cannot fail to secure for it in the public estimation a high place among the novelties of the season.

"[76] Other reviews of the first night took up a similar theme: Sporting Life suggested that "It may be that they looked for something less polished than Mr. Gilbert's verse, and went for something broader and coarser than that delightful author's humour.

"[77] The plot of Thespis, with its elderly gods tired of their life in Olympus, is similar to some of Offenbach's operas, notably Orphée aux Enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld).

They point out Mercury's "I'm the celestial drudge", which anticipates Giuseppe's "Rising early in the morning" in The Gondoliers, and find the "real brand of Gilbertian topsy-turvydom" in the song about the former head of a railway company, "I once knew a chap who discharged a function".

Jane W. Stedman points out that Thespis "looks backward to French opéra bouffe", but it is "fundamentally a Gilbertian invasion plot in which outsiders penetrate and affect a given society, often for the worse."

[55] Elements of Thespis also appear in Gilbert and Sullivan's last opera together, The Grand Duke (1896), where a theatre company replaces the ruler and decides to "revive the classic memories of Athens at its best".

In the Standard, A. E. T. Watson wrote: Mr. John Hollingshead... has judiciously called on Mr. W. S. Gilbert to furnish him with an original opera-extravaganza, and entrusted its musical setting to Mr. Arthur Sullivan.

[88] Scott called the song a "ludicrous ballad", but "quite in the spirit of the well-known compositions of 'Bab,' and, as it has been fitted with a lively tune and a rattling chorus, a hearty encore was inevitable.

[91]The Morning Advertiser thought that "There is an evident attempt to copy the creations of a foreign composer who is so popular at the present time, and who has written some charming music for the gods and goddesses en bouffes.

Goldberg suggests that "It is reasonable to believe that Sullivan made generous use of his Thespis music in other operettas: perhaps owing to the circumstances under which The Pirates of Penzance was written, it contains more than one unacknowledged borrowing from the unlucky firstling of the lucky pair.

At least one song is missing,[111] and an entire character, Venus, is mentioned in at least five reviews as stout, elderly, and heavily made-up; she does not appear in the libretto but was listed in the first night programme.