Gilbert and Sullivan in Victoria
In the world of Gilbert and Sullivan 2025 actually marked four notable anniversaries:
- Arthur Sullivan died on the 22 November 1900, 125 years ago
- The Mikado the most popular of the Savoy Operas, premiered on the 14 March 1885, 140 years ago
- But more importantly to us, the first collaboration for Richard D'Oyly Carte happened on the 25 March 1875, 150 years ago
- And the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Victoria was founded on the 28 August 1935, 90 years ago
How did it all come about?
Richard D’Oyly Carte
Arthur Sullivan, 1888, by Sir John Everett Millais
An opera singer called Celina Dolaro hired the Royalty Theatre in London to present herself in a variety of operas. She engaged as her manager a young man known as Richard D’Oyly Carte, who was also her agent, with the firm of Rudal Carte and Co.
Theatre-goers in the 19th century liked to get their money’s worth and expected more than one work to be on the program. In addition to the main attraction there would be a curtain raiser and an afterpiece.
It was D’Oyly Carte who reunited Gilbert and Sullivan to create an afterpiece for La Pericole, by Offenbach. (They had previously collaborated on Thespis, or, The Gods Grown Old for John Hollingshead, which was staged at the Gaiety Theatre, London as a Christmas extravaganza in 1871, but afterwards had gone their separate ways, except for a couple of ballads that they wrote: 'The Distant Shore' published in 1874, and ‘Sweethearts’ – inspired by Gilbert’s play of that name – published in 1875).
Most books on G&S say that Carte happened to run into Gilbert and asked him if he were interested in providing something for the theatre. But in fact, Sullivan was engaged first. The programme for the opening of La Pericole on the 30 January states ‘in preparation a New Comic Opera, composed expressly for this theatre by Mr Arthur Sullivan in which Madame Dolaro and Nellie Bromley will appear’. This is the first night programme. You will notice in the cast a certain Frederic Sullivan. D’Oyly Carte had previously worked with him and it may be that though his brother Carte came to know Arthur Sullivan.
Obviously, Carte thought the bill could be improved and brought the composer together with W.S. Gilbert who was making his name as both a dramatist and a librettist. Trial by Jury had begun life as a Bab Ballad. Gilbert regularly contributed comic verses for a magazine called Fun. Trial was one of these.
Gilbert had adapted this into a one-act work for the stage, which he sent to Carl Rosa, who had his own opera company, for Rosa to set for his wife. Unfortunately, that lady died and the manuscript was returned. So, on the request of Carte, Gilbert brought it out and Sullivan was asked to set the work. There was only a matter of weeks before it was finished rehearsed and put on the stage on the 25 March 1875.
Programme for the 1875 season at the Royalty Theatre
At that stage, Sullivan, just 32, was expected to become the beacon of English serious music and through his life he continued to write oratorios, cantatas and works for major music festivals. He was seduced away to the world of light opera by Carte and we can all be grateful for this.
On Trial’s opening the main attraction was still La Pericole, but with a curtain-raiser called Chryptoconchoidsymphonsamata!
The merit of the work was immediately recognised and Trial soon replaced the work with the unwieldy title in the more prestigious position as curtain-raiser.
It was Carte’s ambition to create a school of English comic opera. He envisioned a number of composers and librettists creating works, which he would produce. Of course, his partnership with Gilbert and Sullivan was so successful that he did not move on to managing a stable of composers and librettists.
It took him two years to raise enough money, to commission the writing of their next work The Sorcerer. And then there were various problems with investors, until he managed to get rid of them and form the triumvirate of manager, composer, librettist to bring the works to the stage.
So, Trial by Jury was the beginning of what must surely be the most successful theatrical partnership in history. They became household names not only throughout Britain but also the USA, Australia and Europe and continued to be so through most of the 20th century.
So, now let us look at how we, in Australia, came to know and love the operas.
Piracy was rife, not on the high seas, but in all forms of artistic enterprise. Copyright laws were not strong enough to prevent works being produced in just about every country, but the most egregiously in America. In 1878, HMS Pinafore took to the stage in London and very soon after around the world. It created the same style of enormous following that the Beatles did in the 1960s and that Taylor Swift seemed to engender on her recent tour of Australia.
It is said that there were over 100 productions in America, and of course none paid any royalites to Gilbert or Sullivan. Seeing the popularity of these works was an American actor named James Cassius Williamson.
Trial by Jury, 1875
In late 2025, Theatre Heritage Australia, launched a book about George Coppin, the Australian entrepreneur. It was Coppin who was advised by his American agent, that he should engage Williamson and his wife, Maggie Moore, to tour Australia under Coppin’s management and that it would be ‘the most profitable engagement ever made by you and me’. This was in 1873, before the G&S partnership. And what’s more, with something that seems like a premonition of the future, the ship on which they arrived in Australia was the SS Mikado.
The Williamsons arrived in Melbourne in July 1874, on a day they described as ‘cold, wet and miserable’ and opened at the Theatre Royal with the play that had brought them great success in their home country, Struck Oil.
And indeed, they did 'strike oil'. The play achieved a run of 43 nights, which was a record for this city of 110,000 residents. They toured Australia for fifteen successful months and returned to America via India and England.
Three years later, once Pinafore had established itself as a major money maker, Williamson contacted Gilbert and Sullivan and paid for the exclusive right to present the work in Australia. The rights were originally offered to William Lyster but he turned the offer down on the grounds that such a work would not be to the taste of Australians. Wiliamson heard that there were already productions of Pinafore happening here and took legal action.
If you visit Castlemaine, you will hear that HMS Pinafore was the first of the G&S operas to be staged in Australia and this was at their theatre, now a cinema. I asked about this claim when I was there and they are adamant that this is true, but could not give me any details, so we will not give them any credence.
But a firm led by Leon and Kelly was playing the work and so was Horace Linguard, another American who had in the past employed Williamson, and also Hiscock and Hayman. All claimed that English copyright laws did not apply to them, and anyway JCW was still in America and so the pirate performances continued. Williamson engaged lawyers to sue and won the cases, collecting £500 from Leon and Kelly, £200 from Hiscock and Hayman and £300 from Horace Lingard. So before setting foot in Australia he had made a handsome profit, having only paid £300 for the rights.
Nellie Stewart
A performer in one of these offending productions was Nellie Stewart. She would go on to a most distinguished career and did indeed return to G&S in Australia.
Once he had legally established his exclusive rights he travelled to Australia and then opened his own production, playing the role of Sir Joseph Porter himself with his wife as Josephine. It went brilliantly.
Its huge success encouraged Williamson to negotiate for the rights of the next opera, The Pirates of Penzance, for which he paid £1,000. This time he played the Sargent of Police with an Irish accent, creating a tradition that all following in the role also used the same accent.
From this success, Williamson formed his own Comic Opera Company, later amended to the Royal Comic Opera Company, because his productions were seen at the Theatres Royal in both Sydney and Melbourne.
Although he appeared in the first two of his productions, he did not have a good singing voice. His conductor, Signor Paolo Giorza, said of him ‘he knew only one note and he sing it all the time.’
He did appear on stage after this but most of his time was spent on management. His firm secured the rights to all the G&S operas until the copyright ran out in 1961. It was the foundation of his success and if there was ever a lean spell, another revival of the Savoy operas was created to bring in the money.
In time Williamson’s became the largest performing organisation in the world. Not only did it tour all the large productions from Britian and America throughout Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia, but they owned theatres in the capital cities and later film and radio studios.
Of course, these antipodean performances created the desire for more involvement with the G&S Operas. By the way, in what we call the ‘inner brotherhood’—a term from Patience, we never say operettas. They are comic operas.
JCW mainly engaged his cast from Australian singers but he also brought out many who had worked in England under the direction of Gilbert. They insisted our productions should be performed as they were at the Savoy and so Australia adopted the revered Tradition of the works from the outset. When The Mikado opened in Melbourne, it was heralded on the cover of the Australasian Sketcher.
Maggie Moore and J.C. Williamson in HMS Pinafore, 1879
Scenes from The Mikado, Australasian Sketcher, 10 March 1886
Some of these artists had the good taste to like this country so much that they stayed on and became Australian household names, starring not only in G&S but also other Williamson works. One of these was Federici, real name Frederic Baker.
Federici's only appearance at the Savoy was as Sir Roderick Murgatroyd in two matinee performances of Ruddigore in February 1887, before going to New York to play the role in D'Oyly Carte's American production of the opera until April. But he toured all round England for many years in the various D'Oyly Carte touring companies. When The Pirates of Penzance premiered in New York, it was essential to secure the British copyright, so a once-only performance of it was done in the Devonshire town of Paignton. Federici was the Pirate King. Later he was the first to play the Mikado in New York. He also played that role in Australia at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne in 1887. He remained here and created another degree of fame for himself. He was cast as Mephistopheles in Faust, which opened at the Princess Theatre. As he sang his last notes and descended through the trap to hell, he suffered a heart attack and died. Nevertheless, the cast all claimed he was on stage with them in the curtain call. There are those who still claim that he can be seen in the theatre and if he is present at a first night, then the show will be a success. There is a plan to celebrate this man with a musical about his life.
As the popularity of the operas grew so did that of those associated with various roles. Just as in England, the comics parts were known as the Grossmith roles, then the Lytton, the Martyn Green, the Peter Pratt and the John Reed roles. So, it was down under. One of the first to establish this was Howard Vernon. In 1881 he played Major General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance going on to Bunthorne in Patience, the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe, and here he is as Ko-Ko in The Mikado.
Howard Vernon (1885)
Autographed title page of Vinia de Loitte's booklet
We know about him mainly from a small book that his second wife, Vinia De Loitte published. There is very little written on G&S history in Australia but De Loitte, also known as the Comtesse de Vilme-Hautmont, published this small booklet covering the productions. It seemed to come out almost every year with updates. I have seen at least half a dozen editions dated in various years to the mid-1930s.
Incidentally, every copy I have seen is autographed, so if you find an unautographed one it may be rare and valuable. She herself joined the Williamson company and among her many appearances was in the Australian premiere of Utopia, Limited, as Princess Kalyba.
Aggie Thorne as Princess Nekaya & Vinia de Loitte as Princess Kalyba in Utopia, Ltd. (1906)
Ivan Menzies as John Wellington Wells in The Sorcerer (1942)
Although Vernon was greatly acclaimed, he retired to Melbourne and owned a bookshop and when he died his estate was valued at £47.
Another English performer who starred in G&S was C.H. Workman, who performed here with great success. He was invited back to the Savoy, but died at sea off Hong Kong on the way back to Australia following a tour of India and the far East with the JCW G&S Opera Company in 1923. You can find out his history from Theatre Heritage’s own on-line magazine.
Coming into the 20th century, I have met many who think of the G&S performances as represented by Ivan Menzies.
He had been an understudy in the touring D’Oyly Carte companies for a few years, taking over as principal comedian of the "New" Company in July 1925 until its disbandment in June 1927, and had married the lovely soprano Elsie Griffin. He seized the chance to come to Australia when invited to join Williamsons. Here he became a star. Everyone who remembers seeing him from those days has great praise for him, but I have met a number of folk who knew him personally and I have never heard a good word said about him. When he married Elsie, the company was playing in Leeds but they travelled to Sheffield for the wedding. It was his view that before the marriage Elsie, as a single woman, should pay her own train fare there and as her husband, he would pay it on the way back.
Later he joined the Moral Rearmament Movement and a biography of him does seem to have been written to promote that. But I do not have enough knowledge of the organisation to make any relevant comment.
JCW, which I will from now on refer to as ‘The Firm’ regularly revived the operas and took them round not only Australia but New Zealand and parts of Asia. These tours occurred regularly through the teens to the early 1960s.
John Adams as Pish-Tush, Richard Wordsworth as Ko-Ko & Martin Lawrence as Pooh-Bah in the 1962 JCW revival
One revival of the operas came to Melbourne in 1935. To promote it, the Argus newspaper conducted a plebiscite of its readers, asking them to vote for their favourite opera. For the record The Yeomen of the Guard won, with The Mikado coming second. This prompted a suggestion that there should be an association for lovers of the operas. A Mr Stewart set the ball rolling by sending a letter to The Age, proposing a G&S Society. This was responded to by a number of people influential in the music world at the time, including Professor Bernard Heinze, Director of Music at the Melbourne Conservatorium. Bernard Manning, one of the old D’Oyly Carters who was now performing with the Firm and Gregory Stroud, another such, gave their support, as did Frank Tait, managing director of J.C. Williamsons. Professor Heinze offered the conservatorium as a meeting place. On 28 August 1935, The Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Victoria officially came into being.
This did cause a little discord. The Old Player and Playgoers Club, had had a similar idea and was setting up a club called The Savoyards. Their president Alfred Peters was not happy to be overtaken by another society and terse letters were exchanged.
Once initiated, the G&S Society met on the third Friday of every month, read through parts of the operas or Gilbert’s plays and sang choruses. After a year of this, they felt ready to produce a full opera which they did on the 24 October. If you pass a Mexican restaurant near the corner of Russell and Bourke Streets, give it a reverential nod—because in 1936 it was the site of the King’s Theatre and the venue of our first season. The Sorcerer was presented with Gilbert’s play Rosencranz and Guildenstern preceding it.
It was reviewed in The Herald. It is difficult to read, but it is a curiosity because it focusses solely on the costumes.
Colourful settings and gay costumes are features of this bright opera. Violet Jackson wore several attractive frocks, her first appearance was made in a period gown of sage green taffeta made with a wide panier skirt. Later she wore a lovely frock of white satin which had a full skirt, amply trimmed with frills of gold lace. Dorothy James, who played the part of Lady Sangazure was a decorative figure in a lavender brocade gown embossed with glistening crystal beads and trimmed with silver lace.
The Argus chose to be more constructive:
As the family sorcerer John W. Wells, Paull Fiddian carried off the dramatic honours of the evening. His handling of the patter song was remarkably good … Violet Jackson made an attractive heroine and was well seconded by her adoring Alexis.
Violet Jackson, I may add, our first leading lady, was involved with the Society through the years from the start to the 1980s. She had been a principal with the Firm, but retired when she married. She performed with us for some years and then, she became a director and passed on her knowledge to succeeding generations. Here she is from a 1970s program. I also have a program from our 50th year where she is listed as prompter.
From GSOV program
Suzanne Holden as 'Josephine' in Pinafore
While many of our members went on to a professional career, only one ever rose to the heights of singing with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. After performing the leading soprano roles in several of our productions, Suzanne Holden auditioned for and won a place with the premiere G&S Company in England, staying with them until they wound up in 1983. This photo is of her singing Josephine in HMS Pinafore, a role she understudied.
By now of course Williamson himself had moved on to that great green room in the sky and The Firm, still under its old name, had amalgamated with the Taits, a family of four brothers, with Frank Tait at the helm.
The Tait Brothers
Tait had been supportive of the establishment of the G&S Society but now was even more generous.
The G&S Society then staged the first revival of Utopia, Limited since its professional Australian tour of 1906, for four nights at the King’s Theatre from Wednesday, 6 October 1937 to the following Saturday. The Sun-News Pictorial noted that: “It will be presented by a specially selected cast and chorus of 80, with the University Students’ Orchestra conducted by J. Sutton Crow. The producer is Mr. Lennox Brewer, formerly of J.C. Williamson Ltd.” This followed on from a programme of excerpts from the opera that the Society had presented in the Melba Hall at Melbourne University in late June of that year. The production was subsequently reviewed in the Sun, with emphasis once again given to the costumes rather than the performance itself.
Utopia Opens at King’s Theatre
COLOURFUL settings and gay frocking make bright entertainment of the Savoy opera, Utopia Ltd., presented by the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Victoria, in association with J. C. Williamson Ltd., in the King’s Theatre last night.
This amusing opera, which takes place over two acts in Utopia, will be presented again tonight, tomorrow and Saturday nights.
Opening in a palm grove, with the blue ocean in the background and tropical foliage on the shore making a glamorous background for the grass skirts, leis and flowers worn by the girls, the action then moves to the throne room in King Paramount’s Palace.
In vivid contrast with the colorfulness of the clothes worn by the island girls are the pure white saris and draped skirts worn by the Princesses Nekaya and Kalyba (Alice Harris and Amanda Neil) and the emerald green velvet frock of the Princess Zara (Dorothy Bendall). This frock is made with a redingote with a scalloped band of gold metal lace at the hem of the full skirt, matching the flounced underskirt and frills edging the elbow-length sleeves. Her hat of matching velvet is trimmed with shaded green plumage.
The Sun News-Pictorial, Thursday, 7 October 1937, page 46
The backing of Williamson’s is also an indication that the production may have reused the original 31 year-old scenery from the opera’s 1906 tour (or at least “equivalent” scenery from its storehouse), in addition to costumes from the JCW Wardrobe Department.
In 1938 the society also mounted a production of The Gondoliers, for which Frank Tait allowed us to use His Majesty’s Theatre as well as JCW's costumes and scenery and orchestra.
Publicity for the production noted there were 100 performers involvced. I am guessing that this must have included the orchestra as fitting 100 people onto the stage, not to mention allowing them to dance on it would have been some feat.
When the copyright lapsed in 1961 there were attempts to mount more modern productions but the public rejected them.
Program for the 1969/1970 season
Dennis Olsen in Patience
Then in 1969, the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, a forerunner of the Australian Opera, mounted four of the operas; Pirates, Iolanthe, HMS Pinafore and The Yeomen of the Guard and toured them round the country. It was cast mainly with opera singers, who were able to act and bring the works to life musically as perhaps they had not been heard for some time. They had a very successful season at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne, and they also created a star. Dennis Olsen was primarily an actor with a good reputation in dramatic roles. He was cast in the patter roles of Major General Stanley, the Lord Chancellor and Sir Joseph Porter and from then on, he was known for his G&S work—although he by no means stopped performing in other genres. The Australian Opera thrived on its revivals of G&S.
Greg Dempsey and members of the Hawthorn Operatic Society
We were not the only company to perform G&S in Melbourne. In the 1970s, when I moved here, there were at least five who regularly put on the operas. Now we have two. The Savoy began its life when members of a Surrey Hills Church Choir formed the Mont Albert Choral Society and then began staging operas under the name of The Youth Operatic Society. By 1952 they were the Hawthorn Operatic Society and one of their members was Greg Dempsey. You may remember him as a principal with the Victoria State Opera and the Australian Opera, but he had previously made a considerable career in England, especially well-known for his roles in Britten’s operas but he began with the Hawthorn Society, and thanks to our THA member, Geoffrey Orr, I can bring you some pictures of his early days on stage. Geoffrey has contributed articles on Demsey to our magazine.
The Hawthorn Society went through more changes of name. A portion of the society preferred to sing G&S while others wanted to move to operetta and opera. That section called themselves the Victorian Light Opera Company which later was the foundation of the Victoria State Opera, of beloved memory. The remaining members christened themselves the Savoy Company. They now exist as a touring group visiting smaller venues round Melbourne and Victoria.
But back to us. We have moved around over the years from school halls to better equipped theatres. We have also taken shows to a number of country venues all round Victoria and twice to England to attend the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Buxton, where we presented Patience, Yeomen and The Arcadians. The shows were well received and garnered several awards. We have even performed on the Polly Woodside with something we called HMS Gilbert and Sullivan and most bizarrely, we took Trial by Jury to Pentridge Prison and the inmates loved it. Of course, it helped that the father of the Plaintiff was a prison governor.
Over the years we have strived to improve our staging, I believe during the war, sacking was used to paint backdrops on. That must have been difficult. Also, our programs have become more sophisticated.
At the end of Diana’s talk, a delightful concert performance of Trial by Jury was given by members of Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Victoria.
Photo by Robert Wagner
