The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198167105 ISBN 13: 9780198167105

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2001

Synopsis

The Complete Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan provides the complete text of all the Gilbert & Sullivan operas which are still performed today, together with extensive annotations covering 'lost' songs, alterations and additions, obscure allusions, production points, and comments of interest. Each opera has an introduction which places it in its context, and a potted history of performances up to the present. No other book provides such extensive commentary on the texts of the Savoy Opera nor such a source of innocent merriment to fans of the incomparable Victorian duo.

For each opera, there is a short introduction describing how the work came to be written, and giving its performance history. The text, including stage directions, is given on the right-hand page, and on the left (keyed in by line numbers) are notes. These give such information as the identity of a real-life person appearing or mentioned as a character, wordings that were different in the original edition (the one sent to the Lord Chamberlain for licensing), changes made for the first American performance, glosses on technical terms (e.g. legal terms), literary references, cross-references to similar items in other Savoy operas, comments from first-night critics, and many other things

About this title

Review:

a beautifully produced door-stopper of a book. (Times Literary Supplement)

Just when you thought you knew everything there was to know about G&S here comes another book with even more information to swell the cards of Trivial Pursuit. (Musical Opinion)

superbly edited by Ian Bradley with a succinct but informative introduction to each opera and copiously detailed notes explaining away the wildest fancies of Gilbert's wide-ranging erudition. (Classical Music)

About the Author:

Ian Bradley is an historian and the author of a number of books on 19th century liberalism. He is now a minister of the Church of Scotland, living in St Andrews and Senior Lecturer in Practical Theology in the School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews.

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0198167105
• ISBN 13: 9780198167105
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 1214
• Editor: Bradley Ian