Good-bye to G. and S.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 512, 14 April 1949, Page 8

Good-bye to G. and S.

HAVE just come sadly to the end of the repeat performances of the BBC Gilbert and Sullivan programme, now finished from 2ZB, but not I trust to be buried beyond hope of exhumation. It seemed to me that in the series almost as close harmony was achieved between biography and musical illustration as in the operas themselves between words and music-this was one of the few occasions when I did not begrudge the fact that song must yield place while half-finished to biography, since the biography cast such necessary illumination on the song-making. It was a rare achievement also to leave the listener at the end of the six episodes as kindly disposed towards Gilbert as towards the more endearing Sullivan; in a fit state of mind to forgive Gilbert for being in the right (unlike the Good Queen) about Sullivan’s true métier, It is difficult to depict the quarrels of famous men without making the protagonists a little smaller, but Lesley Bayly managed to make them merely more human, and to leave us feeling grateful that the fundamental differences in character and outlook should have been kept under control long enough for so much good work to be born rather than irritated that such differences ever arose to spoil the unique partnership.