The Launching Of "H.M.S. Pinafore"

Radio Record, 6 May 1938, Page 19

The Launching Of "H.M.S. Pinafore"

GILBERT AND SULLIVAN DIAMOND JUBILEE

WITHIN a month of the sixtieth anniversary of the first performance of "H.M.S. Pinafore," we turn back the pages of history and glimpse a memorable first night of the days of our grandparents. This initial performance fell on a Saturday, on May 25, 1878, to be ex-act-the place the Opera Comique in the Strand. The theatre has vanished and the author and the composer have long since passed to make merriment and Imusic in some other sphere. The opera is still with us, seemingly as fresh as a bunch of spring violets, It is continually being performed by professionals and amateurs all over the English-speaking world, with searcely a word of its libretto, a bar of its music, or a scrap of its "business" altered, In the London of that far-off day in 1878, the Queen’s birthday had been officially celebrated that morning with the Trooping of the Colour; the Royal Academy was drawing its May crowds; and an Australian eleven, which ineluded Spofforth, the "demon. bowler," the two Bannermans, Blackham, the great wicket-keeper, and W. L. Murdoch, was beginning to open the eyes of the public at Lord’s and the Oval. Mrs, Langtry, in the early glow of her beauty, had just’ been presented at one of the Queen’s Drawing Rooms, carrying a. bouquet of Marshal Niel roses ,SoO enormous that it perfumed the whole room; a Mr. Oscar Wilde, of Magdelen, had just carried off the Newdigate, to the delight of his College; 9 The opening weeks of the opera were by no means successful, There was even a good deal of talk of its being taken off. It is quite possible that its reception by some of the other critics contributed to its early difficul-

ties. A number left it alone altogether while several of those who wrote abou. it seemed to have heen completely wildered.

The eritics were utterly at a loss to find themselves suddenly in the presence of an extravaganza so. polished and so shapely, so preposteroug and yet so logical, so fan- ' tastical and at the same time so realistic as "H.M.S. Pinafore." — Happily for radio listeners, sixty years after that red letter night in London’s stage history, there are such things as complete recorded musical renderings of this and other G. and S. operas. Station 4YA listeners will hear "H.M.S. Pinafore’ on Sunday, May 8.