Cultural Influence Of Gilbert And Sullivan
In the past 125 years, Gilbert and Sullivan have pervasively influenced popular culture in the English-speaking world. Lines and quotations from the Gilbert and Sullivan operas have become part of the English language, such as "short, sharp shock", "What never? Well, hardly ever!", "let the punishment fit the crime", and "A policeman's lot is not a happy one".
The Savoy operas heavily influenced the course of the development of modern musical theatre. They have also influenced political style and discourse, literature, film and television and advertising, and have been widely parodied by humorists. Because they are well-known, and convey a distinct sense of Britishness (or even Victorian Britishness), and because they are in the public domain, songs from the operas appear "in the background" in many movies and television shows.
The operas have so pervaded Western culture that events from the "lives" of their characters from the operas are memorialized by major news outlets. For instance, a New York Times article on 29 February 1940, noted that Frederic, from The Pirates of Penzance, was finally out of his indentures (having reached his 21st birthday, as described in that opera).
Read more about Cultural Influence Of Gilbert And Sullivan: Musical Theatre and Comedy, Effect On Amateur Theatre, Politics, Government, and Law, Phrases From The Operas, Songs and Parodies, Literature, Film, Television, Other Media
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“They’re semiotic phantoms, bits of deep cultural imagery that have split off and taken on a life of their own, like those Jules Verne airships that those old Kansas farmers were always seeing.... Semiotic ghosts. Fragments of the Mass Dream, whirling past in the wind of my passage.”
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“I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.”
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“Now owing, I’m much disposed to fear,
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