GILBERT and SULLIVAN: The Mikado (1885): Overture
GILBERT and SULLIVAN: The Yeomen of the Guard (1888): Overture
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Sir Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded February 1992
by Ken
If you haven't been around Sunday Classics much, you may not be aware that I take my Gilbert and Sullivan right seriously. (See, for starters, the June 2010 post "The Mikado says, 'It's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.'") I don't think of their run of comic masterpieces, from Trial by Jury (1875) through The Gondoliers (1889), as frothy light entertainments of about a millimeter's depth. Oh, there's plenty of froth; I don't ever want to lose sight of how funny these pieces are, or can be. But even the humor seems to me to come from a very different place, and to work in a very different way, from that imagined by an awful lof ot fans.
I PLAN TO TRY TO EXPLAIN THIS BETTER SUNDAY . . .
