SULLIVAN: Haddon Hall.(Review)

SULLIVAN: Haddon Hall

[] Members of the Prince Consort, Edinburgh, Lyle. Text and translation. The Divine Art 21201 (2)

The bad blood between Gilbert and Sullivan around the time of The Gondoliers (1889) -- ironically one of their merriest efforts -- may have come to a famous boil over new carpets for the Savoy Theatre, but Sullivan's striving for the grandiloquent was the underlying problem. His opera Ivanhoe opened and virtually closed the new Royal English Opera House; his gloomy cantata The Golden Legend was more popular but is forgotten today. Without G&S, the Savoy's impresario, Richard D'Oyly Carte, was forced in the 1890s to offer G&S revivals, operettas by S sans G and works by other writers.

One of these was Haddon Hall seen in 1892 for more than 200 performances, with a cast including a bevy of old Savoyards. The plot was Elizabethan romantic-historical, about a famous elopement, but reset in the seventeenth century to add a Puritan element to the plot. (Mary Pickford appeared in a silent-film version of the story in 1924.) Accompanying Sydney Grundy's plodding three-act book and excessively floral lyrics, Sullivan's score lacks the atmosphere, grandeur and sublime melody of such other efforts as The omen of the Guard. Those who admire heavily operatic operetta may like this work; indeed, George Bernard Shaw thought it musically a Savoy masterwork.

It's hard to see why. The libretto begins with the "Stately Homes of England," but what follows lacks any kind of Noel Cowardian, let alone Gilbertian wit. Instead, there are masses of songs dealing with floral arrangements or garden metaphors. At least two borrow ideas directly from Ruddigore -- a seasonal madrigal and a slightly more effective solo for the contralto about a Rose ...