The Sorcerer - Productions

Productions

The Sorcerer opened on 17 November 1877 at the Opera Comique, preceded by Dora's Dream, a curtain-raiser composed by Sullivan's assistant Alfred Cellier, with words by Arthur Cecil, a friend of both Gilbert's and Sullivan's. Busy with last-minute cuts and changes the day before the show opened, Sullivan had no time to write an overture and used the "Graceful Dance" music from his incidental music to Henry VIII, together with a few measures of music from "Oh Marvellous Illusion", as an overture. For the 1884 revival, an overture was composed by Sullivan's assistant, Hamilton Clarke. Gilbert's meticulous rehearsal of the cast was noticed and commented on favourably by the critics, and the opening-night audience was enthusiastic. The Sorcerer ran for 178 performances, making a profit. A touring company also began playing the opera in March 1878. D'Oyly Carte continued touring the piece in the early 1880s. Unauthorised productions played on Broadway and elsewhere in the U.S. beginning by 1879.

The Sorcerer was revived in 1884, the first of Gilbert and Sullivan's full-length operas to be revived. Except for The Mikado, it had a second London revival sooner than any of their other works, in 1898. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company generally played Trial by Jury as a companion piece with the opera. In America, The Sorcerer was played as early as 1879 by the Adah Richmond Comedy Opera Troupe at Boston's Gaiety Theatre. In Australia, its first authorised production opened on 22 May 1886 at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne, produced by J. C. Williamson, starring Frank Thornton, Nellie Stewart and Alice Barnett, conducted by Alfred Cellier, although unauthorised productions had appeared by 1879.

In the early years of the 20th century, however, The Sorcerer gradually fell out of favour in Britain. As discussed below, it draws on an older theatrical tradition and satirises social and operatic conventions that are less accessible to modern audiences than the ones explored in the more famous G&S works starting with H.M.S. Pinafore. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which had exclusive rights to the opera in Britain, dropped The Sorcerer in 1901, and its principal repertory company did not play the piece again until 1916, after which it made its first professional London appearance in over twenty years in 1919. The company played the opera only intermittently during the 1920s and early 1930s. In 1938 and 1939, it was performed only in the company's London seasons, and only for a handful of performances. During the winter of 1941–42, the scenery and costumes for The Sorcerer and three other operas were destroyed in enemy action. The opera was not revived professionally in the UK until 1971. Amateur British companies followed suit, as many dropped it from their repertory of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas during these three decades, although American companies often continued their regular rotation of the eleven operas from Trial through The Gondoliers.

Outside the U.K., however, the opera continued to be played regularly in Australasia by the J. C. Williamson Opera Company, and it was revived on Broadway in 1915 with DeWolf Hopper in the title role. It was played by the American Savoyards in the United States from the 1950s and by other professional companies in the U.S. thereafter. After 1970, The Sorcerer was included in the D'Oyly Carte repertory through the 1975 centenary season, then dropped for several years, then restored for the company's last several seasons before it closed in 1982. Amateur companies that had dropped the opera restored it to their rotations after the 1970 revival, and it still receives regular productions, both professional and amateur.

The following table summarises the main London productions of The Sorcerer during Gilbert and Sullivan's lifetimes: