Word: gilbertian
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...Gondoliers" is a thing apart from the other Savoy Operas. It is true that the plot reveals the old familiar Gilbertian shreds and patches. Again you see the playwright, with the help of a Latin Little Buttercup, mix those children up, and not a creature knew it. Again, in republican Barataria, he puts down the mighty from their seat; and "ambassadors and such as they grow like asparagus in May, and dukes are three-a-penny." But the music, the whole atmosphere of the piece, is a different matter. It is flowing, Verdian, Rossinian, lightly serious, made of Latin lyricism...
...capable chorus, the "gentlemen of Japan," forthright in song, mincing in pantomime, hair-trigger with the fan. Then there are three most excellent characterizations: the Lord High Executioner, the Lord High Everything Else, and the Mikado. Mr. William Danforth, as the Mikado, is a player most perfectly in the Gilbertian tradition. His devastating Oriental grin stretches permanently from ear to ear; he rocks with noiseless merriment as Ko-Ko tells of the deadly snickersnee; he recites the list of hand-tailored punishments aimiably through his teeth, till suddenly his blood-curdling laugh, like Mephistopheles, rips up and down the baritone...
...Frank Moulan, as the Executioner, is even cleverer, if less Gilbertian. A wizened-eyed little wisp of a man, he capers about constantly, kicking up such a breeze with his furious fanning that he all but blows himself into the wings. He takes frequent encores by singing the most irreverent variations on the text, translating "The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring, Tra-La" into every dialect but the Scandinavian. He expands the patter-song "I've Got a Little List" to include the more recent nuisances. Even in Gilbert's day this song was progressively altered to include...
Revived last week in Manhattan was the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta The Mikado, presented by Milton Aborn's Civic Light Opera Company. Oldtimers in the audience flinched when the curtain rose to reveal a meaningless shadowgraph sequence of Japanese town life, a very un-Gilbertian interpolation. But all was set right again when Howard Marsh stepped out and began to sing "Gentlemen, I pray you tell...
...University Glee club as well as from the Radcliffe Choral Society, presented a long list of choruses for the enthusiastic audience, giving to the swinging rhythms and agitated choral comments a delicate interpretation par excellence. In clearness of enunciation, which is so important for the true enjoyment of the Gilbertian witticisms, and in rapid shading of tone and prompt assertive entrances so inherent in the music, the chorus did outstandingly well. Singing with enthusiasm which nevertheless was confined to tonal and not physical motions, the chorus interpreted the ringing operettas with much success, while Dr. Davison lent his hand with...