Happy Arcadia - Background

Background

This work is the fifth in a series of six one-act musical plays written by Gilbert for Thomas German Reed and his wife Priscilla between 1869 and 1875. The German Reeds presented respectable, family-friendly musical entertainments at their Gallery of Illustration beginning in 1855, at a time when the theatre in Britain had gained a poor reputation as an unsavory institution and was not attended by much of the middle class. Shakespeare was played, but most of the entertainments consisted of poorly translated French operettas, risque burlesques and incomprehensible broad farces. The Gallery of Illustration was a 500-seat theatre with a small stage that only allowed for four or five characters with accompaniment by a piano, harmonium and sometimes a harp.

The title of Happy Arcadia is an oxymoron, as the inhabitants of this fictional Arcadia are anything but happy. Arcadia was a legendary site of rural perfection, first described by the Ancient Greeks, that was a popular setting for writers of the 19th century and artists such as Jean-Antoine Watteau. Happy Arcadia is a satire on the genre of pastoral plays, which were set in an ideal world. The piece has a typical Gilbertian topsy-turvy plot in which magic items grant wishes, and each of the characters uses his or her wish to become someone else. The magic items cause the sort of transformation that fascinated Gilbert throughout his career and that he used in all his "lozenge plot" works, including The Sorcerer, Foggerty's Fairy and The Mountebanks. Theatre historian Kurt Gänzl noted that "the highlight of the show was a scene in which, various jealousies having arisen, everyone is simultaneously wishing he were one of the others – and consequently everyone is! favourite theme of change of identity or personality."

As the original score is long lost, others have created their own, and Jonathan Strong's adaptation of Sullivan's non-Gilbert and Sullivan music may be heard on the video of the work by the Boston Massachusetts-based group, Royal Victorian Opera Company.

Gilbert (who directed and designed his own shows) was busy in the days leading up to the opening of Happy Arcadia: Four days before Happy Arcadia opened, Gilbert's one-act farce, A Medical Man, opened at St. George's Hall, although it had been published in 1870. The original production of Happy Arcadia played from 28 October 1872 to 2 May 1873. A revival, produced by and starring Rutland Barrington, played at St George's Hall from 15 July 1895 to 10 August and again from 4 November until 30 November 1895. Although Happy Arcadia was one of the later pieces by Gilbert for the German Reeds, it was a step backwards in terms of dramat development.