"Pirates of Penzance" (1879) THE GILBERT AND SULLIVAN PIANO OVERTURES PROJECT

Описание: by Arthur Sullivan and Alfred Cellier

*best heard on a computer or in the ears
As most of you know from previous posts, the overtures-much like most Broadway overtures-were often written by Sullivan's current musical director or some such using notes from Sullivan as to how he wanted it and then edited and changed by Sullivan to the finished product. Only four of them were written entirely by him.

For me this is the first of their genuinely great overtures, more of a single piece. It is pure joy and very Victorian-except for the ballad there isn't a note that would be out of place on a Sunday in Kensington Gardens. And "Ah, Leave Me Not To Pine" early on in it, is one of the two most transcendently beautiful moments in all the overtures-so I happily shed blood getting it the way I wanted.

In 1921 D'Oyly Carte took on a new musical director, Geoffrey Toye who was given permission to make a few score adjustments to a couple of shows. One was to write a completely new overture to "Ruddigore" which is the one you know and the one I posted. More to come on that in my next G&S post. He also added a tag to the overture to "The Gondoliers" which I understand but you won't hear it in this series as that's one of the four written entirely by Sullivan and I believe you should hear those as he wrote them.
What's REALLY odd is that they had him write an entirely new overture to "The Pirates Of Penzance". WHY? There's nothing on that. I gather it lasted about two minutes in performance and is lost. Which is as it should be. This is a perfect overture.

The show premiered in NYC on New Year's Eve 1879. Because of the runaway theft of "Pinafore" all over the U.S. they decided to debut the thing in New York to establish U.S. copyrights-while holding a street-clothes read-through in front of an invited audience in England to do the same there.
It played the Fifth Avenue Theatre on Broadway and W.28th St. (get it?) The original Fifth Avenue Theatre on 24th and Fifth Avenue was run by actor/manager Agustin Daly. When the theatre burned down in 1873 he moved his company to the St.James and renamed it the Fifth Avenue. And I guess this makes as much sense as buying a frozen Nathan's hotdog in Indiana. The (new) Fifth Avenue Theatre, btw, was the first in the world to be air-conditioned, in 1877.
(recording note: the percussion instrument used here is my copy of the memoirs of Jessie Bond)