A Sensation Novel is a comic musical play in three acts (or volumes) written by librettist W. S. Gilbert and composer Thomas German Reed. It was first performed on 31 January 1871 at the Royal Gallery of Illustration. New music was later composed by "Florian Pascal" (a pseudonym for Joseph Williams, Jr., 1847-1923), and only four of German Reed's songs survive. The story concerns an author suffering from writers block, who finds out that the characters in his novel are dissatisfied.
The piece satirises the sensation novels popular as pulp detective fiction in the Victorian era. Later in his career, when Gilbert wrote the famous series of Savoy operas with Arthur Sullivan, he reused elements of A Sensation Novel in their opera Ruddigore.
Read more about A Sensation Novel: Background, Roles
Famous quotes containing the word sensation:
“We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.”
—Martha Graham (1894–1991)