The Emerald Isle - History

History

For much of the 1890s, impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte and his wife Helen Carte had struggled to find successful shows to fill the Savoy. They finally found a winning formula in The Rose of Persia by Arthur Sullivan and Basil Hood in 1899, and the two men quickly agreed to collaborate again. However, Sullivan, who had increasingly struggled with ill health, died on 22 November 1900. At his death, Sullivan had finished two musical numbers from The Emerald Isle in their entirety, leaving behind sketches of at least the voice parts for about half of the others. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company commissioned Edward German to complete the numbers Sullivan had sketched and to compose the rest of the opera himself. Carte himself died on 27 April 1901, and the opera was produced by his widow, Helen, who engaged William Greet as manager of the Savoy Theatre during the run of The Emerald Isle.

German, to this point, was known chiefly as a composer of orchestral and incidental music. The Emerald Isle was sufficiently successful to launch German on an operatic career. German's most famous opera was Merrie England (1902), also written with Hood, and Hood went on to a very successful career as an adapter of European operettas for the English stage.

Unlike Hood's first opera with Sullivan, The Rose of Persia, The Emerald Isle does not pay much homage to the Gilbert and Sullivan comic tradition, except for the mistaken identities and the fact that the opera was written for the same opera company and its regular performers. The plot is not reminiscent of Gilbert's topsy-turvy style, nor is there any obvious satiric point. With its Irish jigs and broad comedy, the work was more at home in the musical comedy style that had become prevalent on the London stage by the end of the 1890s. Sullivan's music, while containing much to admire, is "reminiscent rather than fresh", while German's contributions to the score, though partly imitative of Sullivan, marked him as a comic opera composer of promise.