TT: The case of the disappearing duo

The Criterion Collection has just put out superbly produced home-video versions of Topsy-Turvy, Mike Leigh’s wonderful 1999 movie about the making of The Mikado, and Victor Schertzinger’s fascinating 1939 film version of The Mikado as performed by members of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, for whom the operetta was originally written in 1885. These releases are the subject of my “Sightings” column in today’s Wall Street Journal. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
Why are the comic operettas of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan so rarely seen in fully professional productions nowadays? “H.M.S. Pinafore,” “The Gondoliers,” “The Mikado” and “The Pirates of Penzance” are immortal masterpieces whose musicality and stageworthiness have been proven time and again. Opera companies mount them from time to time, most recently when Chicago’s Lyric Opera gave the deluxe treatment to “The Mikado” in December. Yet their popularity has diminished sharply in this country, so much so that I’ve had only one occasion to review a Gilbert and Sullivan revival by an important American theater company, when the Utah Shakespearean Festival did “Pinafore” in 2006.
I can’t tell you why G & S (as they’re known to their fans) have fallen on such hard times, but I’m delighted to report that you can now relish them in your living room….
“Topsy-Turvy” is the smartest backstage movie ever made, a deeply knowing fictional study of how a theatrical production takes shape. The acting, especially that of Jim Broadbent as the irascible, anxiety-ridden Gilbert, is as convincing as it is possible to be….
The 1939 film version of “The Mikado” is noteworthy in part because it, too, is so well sung and played. (The conductor, Geoffrey Toye, had extensive experience performing the G & S operettas in the theater.) But the most remarkable thing about the film is that it preserves a now-dead theatrical tradition. The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, which closed its doors in 1982 after a century of continuous activity, prided itself on performing the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan in a manner consistent with the intentions of Gilbert himself, who staged all of their premieres. Though the “Mikado” film is not a literal record of a stage performance, much of it is closely based on the way that the company had been doing “The Mikado” ever since it opened more than a half-century earlier….
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
“Three Little Maids from School Are We,” as performed in the 1939 film of The Mikado: