Savoy Opera

Savoy Opera

The Savoy Operas denote a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house the Gilbert and Sullivan pieces, and later, those by other composer–librettist teams. The great bulk of the non-G&S Savoy Operas either failed to achieve a foothold in the standard repertory, or have faded over the years, leaving the term "Savoy Opera" as practically synonymous with Gilbert and Sullivan. The Savoy operas (in both senses) were seminal influences on the creation of the modern musical.

Gilbert, Sullivan, Carte and other Victorian era British composers, librettists and producers, as well as the contemporary British press and literature, called works of this kind "comic operas" to distinguish their content and style from that of the often risqué continental European operettas that they wished to displace. Most of the published literature on Gilbert and Sullivan since that time refers to these works as "Savoy Operas", "comic operas", or both. However, the Penguin Opera Guides and many other general music dictionaries and encyclopedias classify the Gilbert and Sullivan works as operettas.

Patience (1881) was the first opera to appear at the Savoy Theatre, and thus, in a strict sense, the first true "Savoy Opera", although the term "Savoy Opera" has, for over a century, included the complete set of thirteen operas that Gilbert and Sullivan wrote for Richard D'Oyly Carte:

Trial by Jury (1875)

The Sorcerer (1877)

H.M.S. Pinafore, or The Lass that Loved a Sailor (1878)

The Pirates of Penzance, or The Slave of Duty (1880)

Patience, or Bunthorne's Bride (1881)

Iolanthe, or The Peer and the Peri (1882)

Princess Ida, or Castle Adamant (1884)

The Mikado, or The Town of Titipu (1885)

Ruddigore, or The Witch's Curse (1887)

The Yeomen of the Guard, or The Merryman and his Maid (1888)

The Gondoliers, or The King of Barataria (1889)

Utopia, Limited, or The Flowers of Progress (1893)

The Grand Duke, or The Statutory Duel (1896)