X-Nico

unusual facts about Savoy opera


Duncraig, Western Australia

Gilbert Road meets Sullivan Road there, near Savoy Place, Pinafore Court, and streets named after 30 characters from the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.


A Welsh Sunset

The fashion in the late Victorian era and Edwardian era was to present long evenings in the theatre, and so producer Richard D'Oyly Carte preceded his Savoy operas with curtain raisers, like A Welsh Sunset.

John Barnett

Although The Mountain Sylph is all but forgotten, it inspired parts of Gilbert and Sullivan's 1882 Savoy Opera, Iolanthe.

La Sylphide

John Barnett's 1834 opera The Mountain Sylph is based on the storyline of La Sylphide; this opera's plot was in turn satirized by W. S. Gilbert in the 1882 Savoy Opera, Iolanthe.

Pineapple Poll

Mackerras knew the Savoy Operas well, as he had played oboe in a pit orchestra in Sydney, where all of the extant Gilbert and Sullivan operas were played except for Utopia Limited and The Grand Duke, and those operas are not represented in Pineapple Poll.

The Willow Pattern

The fashion in the late Victorian era and Edwardian era was to present long evenings in the theatre, and so producer Richard D'Oyly Carte preceded his Savoy operas with curtain raisers, like The Willow Pattern.


see also

A Princess of Kensington

Despite a good reception from critics and Savoy opera devotees, the opera achieved a run of only 115 performances, owing partly to its dense plot and unwieldy libretto, and partly to the continued decline of comic operas in favour of George Edwardes-style musical comedies as the London theatregoing public's choice entertainment.