The Final Savoy Operas: A Centenary Review

By Scott Farrell

This 80-page volume tells the story of the demise of Savoy opera in London during the 1909-1910 season. Produced by actor-manager Charles H. Workman, these operas played for a very short time, only to drop off into obscurity for several decades. Scott Farrell's research on the operas unearths more information about them in this second edition, with corrected details as well as some photos new to this publication. The volume covers four operas: "A Welsh Sunset", "The Mountaineers", "Fallen Fairies" and "Two Merry Monarchs". Each chapter is filled with cast details, plot summaries, photos and critical response of each work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257340897

Book preview

Fairies.

A Welsh Sunset

The summer of 1908 saw interesting changes and events for the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. Sir W.S. Gilbert, knighted in 1907, took an active part in supervising the productions of the Second Repertory Season at the Savoy Theatre. This season consisted of only five Gilbert and Sullivan operas: H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe, The Mikado and The Gondoliers. Also of importance was the return of Rutland Barrington in his old roles such as Lord Mountararat and Pooh-Bah. Among his roles was Don Alhambra in The Gondoliers, a part that he never played before. My figure having become, as it were, more regal than of yore naturally suggested the inference, from a Gilbertian point of view, of its unsuitability for the part of a King, and I therefore surrendered my original character of Giuseppe to Harry Lytton, whose regality is more a figure of speech than one of reality. I made this act of renunciation with the greatest of pleasure, having had, from the very first production of the opera, an intense desire to see what I could do with Don Alhambra, the Grand Inquisitor. [¹] By all accounts, Barrington was at his best in this late stage of life, and his participation in this repertory season helped keep the old Savoy tradition going.

Helen D’Oyly Carte had plans to abolish the encore, but after consideration, the idea was not acted upon. The productions of this season featured the Savoyards of the day, many of whom are not as famous as their predecessors or their successors, including Jessie Rose, Strafford Moss, Henry Herbert and Dorothy Court. There was also a play that has been forgotten, the last curtain-raiser written for the Savoy Theatre, and that was the comic opera titled A Welsh Sunset. Written by Frederick Fenn and with music by Philip M. Faraday, it premiered on July 15 as a curtain-raiser to Pinafore, the second opera of the season. Fenn was born at Bishop Stortford in 1868 and is known as an adapter of plays and the author of a number successful plays, including A Married Woman, Saturday to Monday, A Scarlet Flower (of which he was co-author), Op-’o-Me-Thumb and The Convict on the Hearth. [²] Fenn was also assistant editor of The Graphic for many years. Op-’o-Me-Thumb was adapted for the cinema stage and re-titled The Duchess of Suds.

Faraday was more of a manager and impresario of touring operetta companies than a composer. [³] The team of Fenn and Faraday is best remembered for the musical Amasis, which premiered in 1906 at the New Theatre, London and starred Ruth Vincent. Amasis was a comedy set in ancient Egypt, and was a major success. Vincent made the sole original cast recording, Little Princess, look up, which can be heard on The Savoy Connection (Circa label, ATM 101 ).

But A Welsh Sunset was of a very different type. It is billed as a comic opera in one act, but there is little to find humorous about it. The action of the story is set outside Mrs. Jones’ Cottage on a Welsh hillside; a chair or two, and a deal table. There is, obviously, a sunset. After the overture and an oboe solo to take up the curtain, Jenny Jones (Beatrice Meredith), a weak girl in ailing health, steps out of the cottage and sings a mournful ballad. Mrs Jones (Ethel Morrison) advises her to come back indoors, but Jenny is awaiting the return of her lover, Griffith David, who possesses an amazing tenor voice. (His music is some of the most demanding tenor music in the Savoy operas, with a full two-octave range in just one song.) The libretto describes Griffith as a young Welshman who has gone to Bala to sing in order to try and win a prize so that he may marry Jenny. Jenny insists on waiting for him, and three of the village girls appear (Mabel Graham as Mary Fewless, Beatrice Boarer as Nancy Raine and Bertha Lewis as Gwenny Davis.) They couldn’t wait at home; their men are coming with Griffith. Mrs Jones brings food and plates and Jenny gives us a bit of foreshadowing.

JENNY. When I see the sun go down, I feel as though someone were dying, and I am afraid. Do you ever feel as though the sun might go down into its grave, and the world be left cold?

Her mother assures her that Griffith will be here shortly and laughing at her ridiculous fancies. Griffith’s singing is heard offstage with the chorus[⁴], and Jenny springs to life at the sound. But she’s too weak to stay up, and sinks back into a chair. Griffith (Strafford Moss) rushes onto the scene and goes straight to Jenny. He is accompanied by his friends Owen Rhys (Leo Sheffield), John Lloyd (Sydney Granville) and Morgan Llewellen (Allen Morris). They have walked all the way from Llanferbechan, too excited to wait for the train. While Mrs. Jones serves cider to her guests, Jenny informs Griffith that she heard him a mile away and that she would hear him singing even if she were in her grave. Griffith’s friends sing a trio in praise of the tenor voice and after the dance, the village girls leave the scene. Griffith promises to shower his bride with innumerable gifts, and shows a purse of gold just for singing yesterday. One of the best exchanges in the piece is played as such:

GRIFFITH. I got all that for singing yesterday, and I can make any amount more whenever I like, just by opening my mouth.

OWEN. Ah, it’s a wonderful thing, the singing, and yet I know a man from England who doesn’t care for it whatever. He just walks away at the first. They say there’s many such in England.

Jenny asks Griffith to sing for her today, just for her benefit, because to-morrow’s such a long way off. I feel to-night as though to-morrow wouldn’t come for years and years. As the men go into the cottage, Griffith sings the ballad heard in the overture. At its conclusion, Griffith looks to Jenny for approval, and Mrs. Jones thinks Jenny has gone to sleep. Griffith can’t believe she would sleep now and when he takes her hand, it falls lifeless. He exclaims Oh! I’m too late–too late! What’s the good of fame and money now? It was for her and now I can give her nothing! Jenny! Jenny! Jenny! He falls on his knees by her and buries his face in her lap while Mrs. Jones, crying, bends over the chair. In the shortest finale in Savoy opera, a whopping eight bars, the chorus is heard offstage, unaccompanied, singing a threnody:

Westward where the sunlight dies, Take we now our homeward way, Death is but a golden sunset, Life tomorrow dawns always.

...as the curtain slowly descends.

A Welsh Sunset was knifed by The Times (July 18):

This operetta, by the author and composer of Amasis, now proceeds H.M.S. Pinafore. If contrast was desired, it has been obtained. Nothing could more be more unlike Gilbert and Sullivan than Fenn and Faraday as revealed in A Welsh Sunset. It is a sentimental, even a sickly little piece, showing the death at sunset of Jenny Jones, a Welsh girl in weak health, while her lover, Griffith David, who has just won the prize for singing at an Eisteddfod, is singing to her. Entirely unworthy of the author of Amasis, it is almost equally unworthy of the composer. Jenny Jones has a pretty song at the beginning, and the overture is good; the rest has no character. Perhaps if the piece were finely performed it would seem more satisfactory, but only Miss Meredith did justice to the music, and the orchestra was too prominent throughout.

Despite the above review, the little operetta played until October 17. When Pirates of Penzance was revived on December 1, A Welsh Sunset joined it on the 2nd with a very different cast. Most of the creators of the roles had joined the touring companies; Bertha Lewis, for example, left in October, as did Mabel Graham. Sheffield and Boarer remained but they were replaced by Otto Alexander and Josset Legh at the start of 1909. Pirates managed to outrun this revival, and Jenny Jones breathed her last on February 24, 1909, achieving a total of 85 performances. It is not known if the operetta went on tour. The band parts were, fortunately, kept by the D’Oyly Carte archives, but the autograph score was not so lucky. Its current whereabouts are unknown.

Although the British Library does not have a published copy of the libretto, it does have a typeset copy of it in the Lord Chamberlain Plays Collection that was used to obtain the performing license dated 16 July 1908. A number of minor textual differences between the Metzler vocal score (which contains the dialogue) and the license copy occur, including a different ending chorus:

Life’s a swiftly moving stream. Happy those who’re borne away. Sad and sorry, sick and sore, Stand the watchers on the shore.

Win we honours for our love, Laden we with treasures come. Words are frozen on our breath In the silences of death.

Yet each gentle soul that dies Leaves a legacy to life; All her faith in him shall be Music’s immortality. [⁵]

Most, if not all, of the Savoy curtain-raisers are forgotten works today, perpetually obscured by the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Many of