In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Gilbert and Sullivan: Class and the Savoy Tradition, 1875–1896
  • Adrienne Munich (bio)
Gilbert and Sullivan: Class and the Savoy Tradition, 1875–1896, by Regina B. Oost; pp. xi + 168. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2009, £50.00, $99.95.

W. S. Gilbert was a shopaholic. Who knew? Regina B. Oost uncovered "recreational shopping" propensities in the renowned Savoy operas' librettist (45). While he was writing H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), favorite opera for summer camp productions in my day, Gilbert "purchased tennis balls, cigars, books, etchings, a serge suit, an umbrella, Brussels lace, gloves, wine, a garden roller, pineapple, chocolates, a yacht, a poodle, and diamond earrings for his wife" (45–46). Okay, the tennis balls serve a literal recreational purpose, and who in academia would consider books merely recreational? And an umbrella in England? It's the yacht that gives the reader pause, while the list as a whole imparts a giddy sense similar to Major Stanley's patter song in Pirates of Penzance (1880). The question for such a slim scholarly book then: does it matter?

Oost's study focuses on the economics that contributed to the Savoy opera's immense success, focusing on their participation in and organization by the developing consumer culture. The book literally accounts for the business plan of the formidable partnership of Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan, and Richard D'Oyly Carte in making the Savoy operas appeal to the middle classes and thereby growing a flourishing money tree for themselves. That the partnership simultaneously fed off and participated in consumer culture grants relevance and interest to Gilbert's shopping list and explains why summer theatricals in far-flung outposts of the former Empire would find Gilbert and Sullivan congruent with values that sent them to middle-class American nature to [End Page 369] sing about the Captain of the Queen's Navee. Consumer energy infused the productions, which were tightly controlled and brilliantly orchestrated by Carte's managerial and promotional genius.

The early chapters set the operas in nineteenth-century theater history, showing what is unique about the Gilbert and Sullivan phenomenon. Oost considers the partnership's appreciation of the marketplace in all aspects of production: making the aesthetics into more stuff to buy, making Gilbert and Sullivan operas into status symbols—in short, making the operas into cultural capital. Oost's initial focus on aspects of production—ticket prices, audience composition, advertising, and promotional tie-ins—supplements and enlarges other studies of Gilbert and Sullivan. It is not simply artistic genius that produced Savoy mania, but calculations that paid off and kept on paying. Oost gives as an example a craze for Mikado rooms, furnished with curios and decorated in a so-called Japanese style. More humble budgets could collect Mikado trade cards for other products or those eventually produced by Carte for promotional reasons. Taken as a whole, the book conveys deep appreciation of successful orchestration that generated not only successful productions appealing to bourgeois consumers, but a national institution that indeed became part of British identity. Oost's book adds resonance to that Pinafore refrain: "He is an Englishman" (qtd. in Oost 99).

Little that went into Savoy productions strayed far from product placement. Oost tells us about program credits for the constructor of the floor in Utopia Limited (1893): "The parquet Floor on the Stage has been laid by Mr. H. Bassnat, of 87, Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, London" (68). Of course, this consumer awareness is not unique to the Savoy operas. Costumes, including precious gems, functioned as fashion shows in many West End plays, though Oost does not acknowledge the pervasive intercourse between theatrical performances and commerce. Nor does love trump money in many English fictions at least as far back as Jane Austen, so that preference for rank and income is not unique to Savoy opera plots. The book does provide, however, a focused view of the scope and inclusiveness of thinginess in the Victorian comfortable classes. We listen to lyrics that enumerate the stuff that constitutes bourgeois happiness and enjoy the aesthetics of free programs (although we don't need to be told three or four times that they are free) featuring advertisements. We sing...

pdf

Share