Pineapple Poll - Background and Productions

Background and Productions

The copyright on Sullivan's music expired in 1950, and Mackerras, then assistant conductor and repetiteur for Sadler's Wells Opera, aware of the successful ballets based on Offenbach and Strauss - Gaîté Parisienne and Le Beau Danube - felt a similar arrangement of the music of Sullivan would be equally popular. Peggy van Praagh suggested that he work out the idea with the young choreographer John Cranko. Cranko expanded the plot of Gilbert's Bab Ballad "The Bumboat Woman's Story", in which the central character is named Poll Pineapple. The Gilbert and Sullivan opera H.M.S. Pinafore (especially its character Little Buttercup) was also based, in part, on this story. Cranko introduced new characters (Mrs Dimple) and gave Poll an admirer to enable a happy ending. Mackerras arranged the score of Pineapple Poll from the music of Arthur Sullivan, relying on the Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire, as well as Sullivan's comic opera Cox and Box (written with F. C. Burnand), and Sullivan's Overture di Ballo. Mackerras knew the Savoy Operas well, as he had played oboe in a pit orchestra in Sydney, where all of the extant Gilbert and Sullivan operas were played except for Utopia Limited and The Grand Duke, and those operas are not represented in Pineapple Poll.

Pineapple Poll premiered on 13 March 1951 at Sadler's Wells Theatre by the Sadler's Wells Ballet as part of the Festival of Britain. It was part of a complete evening of Cranko ballets. At the suggestion of John Piper, the production was designed by Sir Osbert Lancaster, who later designed the 1971 D'Oyly Carte production of The Sorcerer. The ballet was later produced by the Borovansky Ballet in 1954, Covent Garden in 1959, National Ballet of Canada in 1959, the Joffrey Ballet in 1970, Noverre Ballet in 1972 and Oslo Ballet in 1975. In recent years, the ballet has fallen out of the professional repertory in the U.S., although there was a revival in 2004 by Spectrum Dance Theater of Seattle, with new choreography by Donald Byrd. In the UK, the ballet remains in the repertoire of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, with a run of performances in 2006 and 2007 and a tour, including to Sadler's Wells Theatre, in 2011.

The score, or excerpts from it, has been recorded at least seven times, including four performances conducted by Mackerras himself. Gervase Hughes wrote, "Although the orchestration is disfigured by over-reliance on glissando harps and succulent counter-subjects for the horns, much of the music comes over well in its new guise, and the combination of a melody from the opening chorus of Patience with the second act quintet from The Gondoliers is quite brilliant." A DVD of the ballet was released in 2011 (also including The Lady and the Fool), of a 1959 studio film of Pineapple Poll, danced by the Royal Ballet with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mackerras. A review in Musicweb International commented, "As a score, this work quite simply sparkles like freshly popped champagne. ... In fact, this is a comic masterpiece. Any viewer will be impressed with the vivacious dancing and the ‘built in’ humour which pervades the work ... would that it had been in colour! The costumes look as if they would have been absolutely magnificent. ... he studio-based performance means that there is a distinct lack of the atmosphere that an audience would have provided."