His Excellency (opera) - Background

Background

From the late 1870s through the 1880s, Gilbert wrote a series of successful comic operas, working almost exclusively with Arthur Sullivan. The Gilbert and Sullivan partnership dissolved for several years after the production of The Gondoliers (1889), because of a financial dispute, but in 1893 they reunited to write Utopia, Limited. Encouraged by the modest success of this piece, the two agreed to write a new piece. In January 1894, Gilbert was ready with the scenario for a libretto that would become His Excellency, and which he hoped Sullivan would set to music. But the two collaborators disagreed over the casting of the leading lady. Gilbert insisted on using his protege, Nancy McIntosh, in the part, who had played the heroine in Utopia. Sullivan and producer Richard D'Oyly Carte, along with many of the critics, had found her unimpressive and did not want her in any more of his operas. The two men were not able to settle their differences, and Gilbert and Sullivan once again had to find different partners.

By 1894, the popular trend on the London stage had moved from traditional comic opera to a new genre, musical comedy, with such shows as The Gaiety Girl becoming quickly popular. Gilbert continued his own evolution in that direction, a trend that had begun in The Gondoliers and Utopia Limited. Gilbert, after approaching George Henschel unsuccessfully, selected Carr as the composer for the new piece. Carr had enjoyed success in musical comedy, with In Town (1892), Morocco Bound (1893) and Go-Bang (1894), but critics inevitably found him inferior to Sullivan. Henry Labouchère, whose lover Henrietta Hodson feuded with Gilbert in 1877, had been a frequent theatrical critic of Gilbert's. Labouchère founded a personal weekly journal, Truth, in 1877, in which he pursued his anti-semitic, anti-suffrage and anti-homosexual social agenda. The journal was often sued for libel. Gilbert ridicules Labouchère's claims to being impartial in "When a gentleman supposes" in His Excellency.

For the production of His Excellency, Gilbert was able to woo former Savoy opera stalwarts George Grossmith, Rutland Barrington, Alice Barnett, Charles Kenningham and Jessie Bond, as well as John Le Hay and the young musical comedy star, Ellaline Terriss, to the cast. Many of the choristers from the Savoy Theatre, who had been disappointed with the recent short run of Mirette there, joined Gilbert's production, and Helen Carte accused Gilbert of poaching the D'Oyly Carte chorus. Choreography was by John D'Auban, and costumes were by Percy Anderson.

His Excellency premiered at the Lyric Theatre, London, under the management of George Edwardes, on 27 October 1894. The production and libretto received enthusiastic notices, though the score met a mixed reception. After the opera opened, Gilbert wrote to Helen Carte, "if it had had the benefit of your expensive friend Sullivan's music, it would have been a second Mikado" (quoted in Wolfson 1976, p. 65). The London run of just over five months (162 performances, closing on 6 April 1895), cut short because of an influenza epidemic, was a disappointment. Nevertheless, the opera had a respectable provincial tour and a Broadway production.