The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (64 page)

In performance

It is a comment on either Gilbert’s genius or the inertia of the British political system that with only a little rejigging, the satire in
Iolanthe
continues to lend itself happily to the controversies of our own day: recent productions have managed to incorporate references to matters such as the ‘Thatcher effect’, the abolition of the Greater London Council, spin-doctoring and the reform of the House of Lords.

Recording

CD: John Reed (Lord Chancellor); Isidore Godfrey (cond.).
Decca 414 145 2

The
Mikado,
or
The
Town
of Titipu

Two acts. First performed London, 1885.

Libretto by W. S. Gilbert

A rage for all things Japanese swept London in the early 1880s, and the great joke in
The
Mikado
is that behind all its comic orientalism, the tone of the proceedings remains thoroughly British.
Gilbert’s original inspiration is said to have been a Japanese sword, hung on the wall of his study, which crashed to the ground as he was pacing up and down.
He also visited the Japanese village set up near his home in South Kensington.

Plot

The Mikado’s son, Nanki-Poo, has fled from the court and the amorous clutches of the hideous Katisha.
Disguised as a wandering minstrel he arrives in the town of Titipu, where he has fallen for the ingenuous Yum-Yum, fresh out of school.
Yum-Yum, however, is engaged to her guardian Ko-Ko, Lord High Executioner, who has been ordered to perform a decapitation.
Nanki-Poo offers himself, in exchange for a month of marriage to Yum-Yum.
Katisha arrives in search of Nanki-Poo.

Yum-Yum is dismayed to discover that the law decrees that all widows must be buried alive.
Ko-Ko lies to the Mikado and tells him that he has executed Nanki-Poo.
When Nanki-Poo’s identity is revealed, it emerges that the death penalty is exacted for killing the Mikado’s heir.
Further muddles – also involving Pooh-Bah, Titipu’s Lord High Everything Else, and Yum-Yum’s friend Pitti-Sing – are finally resolved when Ko-Ko agrees to marry Katisha and it emerges that Nanki-Poo has not been executed after all.

What to listen for

Following a quarrel with Gilbert, Sullivan was reluctant to write
The
Mikado
– a fact belied by the score’s melodic freshness. There is an element of pastiche of Japanese music in the pentatonic opening chorus and the chorus which precedes the Mikado’s entry is a genuine Japanese army anthem, but the score is otherwise as English as Yorkshire pudding.
Among the score’s highlights are the graceful chorus ‘Comes a train of little ladies’ which precedes the mercurial ‘Three little maids’, and in Act II, Yum-Yum’s ‘The sun whose rays’, a tune in which the influence of the music for the Woodbird in Wagner’s
Siegfried
has been detected, and the madrigal ‘Brightly dawns our wedding day’.

In performance

Like
Hamlet
or
Carmen,
The
Mikado
is inexhaustible.
We’ve had
The
Swing
Mikado
and
The
Hot
Mikado,
both with all-black 
casts.
Groucho Marx and Frankie Howerd are among many great comedians who have played Ko-Ko.
It has been performed in Catalan and Croatian.
Mike Leigh made a marvellous film,
Topsy-Turvy,
which explored the opera’s genesis and first performance, and its great numbers, like ‘Three little maids from school’ and ‘I’ve got a little list’, pop up in any number of odd contexts.
Perhaps the most brilliantly daft and totally irresistible modern version is Jonathan Miller’s production for English National Opera at ENO, set without a hint of japonaiserie in the foyer of a 1920s grand hotel, redolent of the novels of P.
G.
Wodehouse.

Recording

CD: Marie McLaughlin (Yum-Yum); Charles Mackerras (cond.).
Telarc 80284 1

Franz Lehár

(1870–1948)

Die Lustige Witwe
(
The Merry Widow
)

Three acts. First performed Vienna, 1905.

Libretto by Victor Léon and Leo Stein

Based, like
Die
Fledermaus,
on a
risqué
French farce,
Die
Lustige
Witwe
boasts a wonderful succession of schmaltzy melodies, richly orchestrated for a band much larger than operettas customarily employ.
To the Edwardians, it seemed exotically sexy and sophisticated, but it also hit a topical nerve in the years before the First World War because of the way it touched on the Balkan question.
A huge and immediate international success, it spawned many inferior imitations, as well as ‘Merry Widow’ fashions and merchandise.

Plot

In the Paris embassy of the impoverished Balkan state of Pontevedro, the envoy Baron Mirko Zeta is worried that that the millions belonging to the wealthy widow Hanna Glawari will be lost to the nation if she remarries a Frenchman.
He hatches a plot to pair her off with a Pontevedrian bachelor, Count Danilo.
The two of them have previously been amorously entangled, but Danilo now avoids her, not wishing to look like a vulgar fortune-hunter.
Meanwhile, Baron Zeta’s wife Valencienne is being pursued by a French aristocrat, Camille, who is widely suspected of courting Hanna Glawari.

Hanna holds a glamorous party.
Valencienne has an assignation with Camille in a summerhouse, but leaves him only with a fan inscribed ‘I am a respectable wife’.
Confusion follows when Hanna is mistaken for Valencienne, and Hanna deliberately provokes Danilo by announcing her engagement to Camille.
Danilo storms off to Maxim’s in a rage.
Once she is confident that Danilo still truly loves her, Hanna explains all to Danilo, and they declare their love for each other.
Pontevedro is saved – and the discovery of Valencienne’s inscribed fan reassures Baron Zeta that his wife’s honour has not been besmirched.

What to listen for