Fred Sullivan - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Born in Lambeth, England, Sullivan was the elder brother of composer Arthur Sullivan. His father, Thomas Sullivan (1805–1866), was a military bandmaster and music teacher born in Ireland, who was educated in Chelsea, London and was based for some years at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. His mother Mary Clementina (née Coghlan, 1811–1882) was English, of Irish and Italian descent. He trained as an architectural draftsman but soon decided on a career as a performer. Later, he quipped, "I still draw large houses." According to Leslie Ayre, Fred sometimes accompanied Arthur to the Chapel Royal and "amuse the boys with comic songs".

Sullivan first appeared in several amateur productions, but his professional London debut is believed to have been as Ali Brown Windsor in a burlesque by Robert Reece, Whittington Junior, and his Sensation Cat, at the New Royalty Theatre in 1870, and as Smart in the accompanying farce Rendezvous. The next year, at the Alhambra Theatre, he took the role of Mr. Cox in a revival of his brother Arthur Sullivan's first comic opera, Cox and Box, with a libretto by F. C. Burnand. Later in 1871, he ran a provincial touring company, playing Cox, with Richard Temple as Bouncer and Richard D'Oyly Carte conducting. The other works played by "Sullivan's Operetta Company" that summer were two Offenbach adaptations, Rose of Auvergne (with Sullivan as Pierre) and Breaking the Spell, in which Selina Dolaro starred.

Sullivan created the role of Apollo in his brother's first operatic collaboration with W. S. Gilbert, Thespis, at the Gaiety Theatre, which ran from December 1871 until March 1872. During this run, he also starred in the companion pieces Dearer than Life by H. J. Byron and Ganymede and Galatea, among other works. He continued to appear at the Gaiety Theatre in 1872 and 1873, playing Patachon in Jacques Offenbach's Les deux aveugles (1872) and in The Magic Fife, a translation of another Offenbach operetta (1873). He moved to the Holborn Empire Theatre by early 1874.

After performances in the spring at Crystal Palace with his own operetta company, Sullivan took his company on tour, in the summer of 1874, appearing in his brother's two collaborations with Burnand, Cox and Box and The Contrabandista, together with a version of Franz von Suppé's Die schöne Galathee, adapted as a burlesque of Gilbert's play, Pygmalion and Galatea, in which Sullivan played Midas "the pseudo art patron". He again played Cox in Cox and Box at the Gaiety Theatre beginning in September 1874. At this time, he met and became firm friends with George Grossmith, before Grossmith had met Sullivan's brother. Later in 1874, he appeared at the Opera Comique as Mercury in Ixion Rewheel'd, an opéra bouffe extravaganza by F. C. Burnand, with music selected by W. C. Levey, and at the Holborn Amphitheatre as the impoverished and henpecked Duke of Rodomont, in Melusine the Enchantress by G. M. Layton and Hervé. In the autumn of that year, he and Carte were both concerned in presenting a touring production of Lecocq's La fille de Madame Angot, for which Sullivan was credited as "secretary", but in which he did not perform.