"How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera"

Anna Russell...................................... Mary Jane Disco
Accompanist...................................... Glen Gordon

Part 2
Gilbert and Sullivan Strike Back

Narrator............................................ Glen Gordon
Accompanist...................................... Susanne Anderson

Chorus

Mary Annarella, Kathy Blaisdell, Theodore Blaisdell, Catharine Butterfield, Anne Clark, Allison Colbert, Brad Crenshaw, Heather Davies, Cami Elbow, Jim Ellis, Jonathan Evans, Elaine Fligman, Anna Foster, John Foster, Gordon Freed, Glen Gordon, Kurtiss Gordon, Jim Hanner, Alan Harris, John Healy, Lorena Healy, Donald Herold, Kevin Hutchinson, Marese Hutchinson, Lew Jordan, Phyllis Jordan, Kevin Kary, Louise Krieger, Elysse Link, Steve Morgan, Diana Peelle, Paul Peelle, Lee Pershyn, Joe Pistrang, Nina Pollard, Lucy Robinson, Matthew Roehrig, Tom Rowland, Dick Stromgren, Joyce Thatcher, Elaine Walker, Jim Walker, Roy Williams

The wonderful English-Canadian soprano/comedienne Anna Russell (27 December 1911 - 18 October 2006) recently passed away. Born Anna Claudia Russell-Brown, Anna Russell was trained and started a career as an opera singer in England. She returned to Canada in 1939 and soon began to appear as an entertainer on local radio stations. In the 1940s she began her solo career, giving many concerts in which she sang and played comic musical sketches on the piano. Among her best works were her concert performances and famous recordings of The Ring of the Nibelungs (An Analysis), a humorous 30-minute synopsis of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, and (on the same 1953 album) her parody How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera.

How this Show Came to Be

VLO first presented Anna Russell's How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera in our Spring Show 1998. We had so much fun with it then that we wanted to see and hear it again. Anna Russell passed away late last year, so this spring show seemed to be a fitting opportunity. Fortunately, Mary Jane Disco, who gave the 1998 performance, was enthusiastic to reprise it.

Glen Gordon, in addition to singing in every one of VLO's fall productions since the beginning (except for one, when he was on sabbatical), has written and narrated a number of our spring shows. He usually has chosen some theme on which to base his choice of the songs and choruses to include, providing an opportunity to illustrate how Gilbert and Sullivan often returned to exercise the genius of their wit in highlighting different aspects of the same human foibles.

Glen has also written and narrated the outreach presentations that we bring to several local elementary schools a couple of weeks before the opening of our fall productions. These are short (about 20 minutes) and contain a few of the best numbers from the upcoming show with a narration that gives a simplified version of the opera's plot for the benefit of the young audiences. (I'm sure that many adults might also benefit from a simplification of some of Gilbert's plots.)

Having chosen Anna Russell's parody as the touchstone of tonight's show, Glen has selected one or two numbers from different G&S operas to represent what Russell could have had in mind as the basis for each of the elements in her parody. We think they will show how very well the parody captures the essence of the original.

-- Kurtiss Gordon

The lyrics of "Let her live a little longer" are by Basil Hood, a librettist who worked with Sullivan after the end of the G&S collaboration. The song is from The Rose of Persia, the last of Sullivan's operas to be presented at the Savoy, premiering in 1899. Sullivan and Hood worked well together--they liked each other, and each appreciated the other's talents. Like Gilbert and Sullivan in their most congenial years, the composer and librettist continued to hone the opera after it opened, and it was one of the two most successful productions at the Savoy in the 1890s. The octet actually was cut before opening night, and its existence was not known until a collection of Sullivan's autograph scores was acquired by Oriel College, Oxford, in 2005.

VLO has two connections with this song. Three years ago, we presented a concert version of The Rose of Persia in its published form. And our Spring 1986 show was "Lost Gilbert and Sullivan," consisting of songs (and verses of songs) that had been cut either before or after opening night, and didn't appear in the published version of the opera. From the distance of a century, we can see that Hood's wit, though popular in his time, is no match for Gilbert's genius. The music, however, is genuine Sullivan.

-- Kurtiss Gordon

Valley Light Opera, Inc., is a nonprofit Massachusetts corporation founded in 1975 by a group of Gilbert and Sullivan devotees. Over the years, VLO has been guided by two principles--to promote broad community participation and to produce fine entertainment. The company has produced all fourteen of the G&S operas as well as Cox and Box, The Zoo, The Rose of Persia, The Chieftain and Sullivan's oratorio The Prodigal Son. In addition, VLO has performed Rudolf Friml's The Vagabond King, Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow, Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, John Philip Sousa's El Capitan, Warren Martin's The True Story of Cinderella, and several of Peter Schickele's P.D.Q. Bach works.

The affairs of VLO are in the hands of a Board of Directors elected by the membership at the Annual Meeting in February or March. Officers of the Board for the year just ended year are Connie Cappelli (President), Glen Gordon (Past President), Kurtiss Gordon (Clerk), and Jim Walker (Treasurer). Members of the Board are Kathy Blaisdell, Nicholas Dahlman, Pat Devine, Bob Graham, Kevin Hutchinson, Elysse Link, Lee Pershyn, Nina Pollard, and Lucy Robinson.

Donations to Valley Light Opera are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.

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