Musical Numbers

Act 1

Intermission

Act 2

Act 3

After Ivanhoe, which had a far longer first run than any grand opera in history, Sullivan turned once again to the comic variety. With Sydney Grundy he wrote the nostalgic and sentimental Haddon Hall (1892) then, reunited with W.S. Gilbert, the political satire Utopia, Limited (1893); with his earliest collaborator F.C. Burnand he revised the old Contrabandista as The Chieftain (1894), doubling the short 1867 work with lively new numbers in his best Mediterranean style; and once again with Gilbert he wrote what might be considered the apotheosis of 19th Century comic opera by weaving French, German, and British strands into The Grand Duke (1896). Then, before attuning his ear to the coming century and its emergent musical comedy (as in his last scores, The Rose of Persia of 1899 and the posthumous Emerald Isle), Sir Arthur made one final attempt, in the manner of The Golden Legend, The Yeomen of the Guard, and Ivanhoe, to create a romantic musical drama. This was The Beauty Stone.

Conceived on a larger scale and in a more serious vein, it was the least successful of the Savoy operas, running for only fifty performances. With extensive dialogue in a pseudo-antique diction and filled with lengthy grand-operatic musical numbers, The Beauty Stone was an odd fit for the Savoy - and for its time. But if you set aside any notion of Gilbert and Sullivan opera and listen instead with ears more open than might have heard the work in 1898, you'll be wonderfully rewarded. What a score! Sullivan seems to be in emotional sympathy with all the characters; there are no Gilbertian ironies here. Even the magical element, the beauty stone itself, which he would surely have rejected if Gilbert had proposed it, seems to have inspired him to pen luxuriant melodies and rich harmonies genuinely full of high emotion.

The lyricist was the art critic and poet Joseph Comyns Carr, once director of the Grosvenor Gallery (of Bunthorne fame). And in the sole instance of Sullivan in a three-way collaboration, the playwright Arthur Wing Pinero (author of the famous problem play The Second Mrs. Tanqueray) set aside the realistic mode and put his hand to this fanciful tale of the temptations of beauty and the search for true love. In my narration, I have tried to capture some of the flavor of Pinero's language while letting the music convey the full emotional range of the drama. This performance will include four numbers in the manuscript score that were cut or shortened during the opera's first run and are not to be found in the published vocal score. They are: the instrumental march with its choral interlude announcing the Show of Beauty; the original extended version of the contest itself, allowing three of the contestants to state their cases; the dramatic trio for Laine and her parents in which she casts off the charm; and the second act dance-duet for Jacqueline and the Devil. This is the first performance of these numbers in their complete musical context in well over a century.

-- Jonathan Strong

Over the years since Sally and I "retired" from producing fall VLO shows, we have concentrated on other non-G&S works from about the same time period as that in which Gilbert and Sullivan were working - The Prodigal Son, an early Sullivan oratorio, Cox and Box, which Sullivan wrote with Frank Burnand, The Zoo and The Chieftain (Sullivan and Bolton Rowe), The Rose of Persia (with Basil Hood), and last year's performance of The Emerald Isle (with Edward German and Basil Hood). We have also performed a Sousa operetta, El Capitan.

The Beauty Stone is different. First of all, it's not a comedy, but a romantic musical drama. Our collaborator in England, Robin Gordon-Powell, archivist and librarian of the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society, explained it in the following note.

Bill Venman

Following the happy success of Victoria and Merrie England in 1897, Sullivan began work on a new opera for the Savoy. The idea of the libretto - that true beauty is an inner quality - came from Joseph William Comyns Carr (1849 - 1916). Carr, a competent dramatist, had written the book for Henry Irving's 1895 spectacular production of King Arthur, for which Sullivan had composed the music, and Sullivan was pleased to be offered the chance to work on something in a similarly romantic vein. Carr wisely confined himself to writing the lyrics, and the distinguished dramatist Sir Arthur Wing Pinero was drafted in to work out the plot and write the dialogue. The piece, styled as 'An Original Romantic Musical Drama' was titled The Beauty Stone.

Great things were expected of this combination of talents, but Sullivan soon found that Carr's lyrics were unwieldy and very difficult to set to music, and by December he was complaining in his diary that his collaborators were unhelpful and inflexible when he tried to suggest alterations that would improve the musical construction: "Both Pinero and Carr, gifted and brilliant men, with no experience in writing for music, and yet obstinately declining to accept any suggestions from me, as to form and construction. Told them that the musical construction of the piece is capable of great improvement, but they decline to alter. 'Quod scripsi, scripsi,' they both say." And later: "It is heartbreaking to have to try and make a musical piece out of such a badly constructed (for music) mass of involved sentences."

Robin Gordon-Powell

Producing The Beauty Stone would have been impossible without the helpful support of John Bechtold, chair of the performing arts program in the Amherst Regional Middle and High Schools, and Brenda Chickering, saddled with the almost impossible job of keeping schedules of room use straight.

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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. In addition to the works listed in the Note from the Music Director, the company has presented all 14 G&S operas, Friml's The Vagabond King, Lehár's The Merry Widow, Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, 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 this year are Glen Gordon, president (filling the term of Kevin Hutchinson), Connie Cappelli, past president. Heather Davies, clerk (replacing Kurt Gordon), Jim Walker, treasurer, and Kathy Blaisdell, Sandra Burgess, Catharine Butterfield, Nicholas Dahlman, Pat Devine, John Foster, Lew Jordan, Lucy Robinson and Tom Rowland.

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