Word: gilbertian
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...collaborators. The opera maintains the high level of its music wonderfully well even between its most famous songs, and there are a number of brief but lovely musical numbers that leave you wishing there were more--the case with "Good Morrow, Good Mother," for example. The subject, too, is Gilbertian best. The combination of blunt, but sophisticated satire of the House of Peers with a typical G & S tale of mismated fairies and lovers produces a book which allows neither the plot nor the satire to become over-whelmingly dominant and then wearying...
Strumpet Call. As producer as well as librettist of the famous operas, Gilbert was the driving power behind the scenes. Through him, the light-opera chorus ceased to be a mere massed accompaniment to the soloists, became vociferous participants in the speedy, highly involved counterpoint of Gilbertian song. Through him, too, many a D'Oyly Carte Company member rose from the ranks to stardom. It was rarely a smooth rise: Gilbert's temper was as full of spikes as a bag of nails, his rehearsals long and terrifying. Once, when a player warmly urged his untalented mistress...
A.P.H. was never better. His satiric jingles had a near-Gilbertian nip & skip. After his first jab, a hilarious hymn to The Good Old Days ("The women wore a little more and beer was alcoholic"), he quickly took a swipe at Socialism: We love our country but we hate The swollen octopus, the State That fills our stomachs well enough But robs the soul of precious stuff...
Sleek, Bourbon-faced John Kendrick Bangs, who died in 1922, was a humorist, a lecturer, an editor, a critic, a librettist, a politician-and successful as all six. Lillian Russell played in his chipper Gilbertian revision of The School for Scandal. As a lecturer he earned $500 a week for discreet blends of laughter and sentiment on such subjects as Salubrities (nice celebrities) I Have Met. As an editor he diapered the old Life's first years, brightened up "The Editor's Drawer" of Harper's Monthly, ran Harper's Weekly until Colonel George Harvey crowded...