No 6 -- April 1977 Edited by Michael Walters
FROM A TURNCOAT TRADITIONALIST by Derrick McClure
[Derrick McClure is one of the most outspoken G & S critics I know. I have only met him once, but we have carried on a spirited (and often stormy) correspondence for many years. A native of Scotland, he has spent periods in Canada and Germany. Over the years I have come to admire and respect his opinions on the literary aspects of G & S, more, I think, than anybody else I know. MPW]
"Gilbert & Sullivan knew their business better than anybody alive today, and the operas don't need any alteration: they're beyond criticism as they stand. Tradition for ever! Revision? Never!" Thus, more or less, many G S addicts; and thus the present one too, in his younger days. And the odd thing is that now, when my call is for enterprise, originality and experimentation, I am as certain as I was then that Gilbert was the best librettist and Sullivan the best composer of light opera who have ever lived. But what I saw then and what I see now are diametrically opposite. Before my first G&S opera, my knowledge of classical music was nil; and The Grand Duke had a truly mind expanding effect on me. From then on, I was hooked; and a succession of excellent performances by Ayr Academy, Ayrshire Philharmonic, and the D'Oyly Carte Company (which, in those days, visited Glasgow every year) fed, without, of course, ever satisfying my addictions. Within a few years I had seen nearly all the Savoy canon at least once and most of them many times; besides collecting every G & S record and reading every G & S book I could get my hands on. The only drawback, though I was completely ignorant of it at the time, was that though my acquaintance with G & S was increasing by leaps and bounds, my knowledge of the rest of Classical music was remaining where it had always been - rock bottom. Not that this worried me, so far as I thought about it at all: nothing could possibly touch G & S, and who could want anything else?
It came as a bit of a shock to me to discover that some people could. I gradually became aware of the fact that there was a wider musical world in which acquaintances of mine were fairly knowledgeable, and that these people had a strongly negligent attitude to G & S. Some appeared almost to treat the Savoy operas as if they didn't exist or didn't matter, and others actually spoke of them with contempt. Well was a devoted Savoyard going to stand for this? 1 didn't know much about other music, but I knew a lot about G & S, and specifically I knew what it did for me. I took a passionately defensive stance, upholding the honour of the Savoy canon against all comers. And upholding the D'Oyly Carte too: I saw them as a staunch bastion of Gilbert's decrees. Of course, the idea that Gilbert need not necessarily be the last word on the subject of how the operas should be played would have struck me as ridiculous: how could anyone know better than he did about it? The idea of tinkering with G & S was vandalism if not positive blasphemy. Hearing that the copyright was soon to expire, with the threat of experimental productions by unsanctified outsiders, I immediately began composing venomous letters denouncing those revolting parodies of great works, to be sent as soon as the great works started being revoltingly parodied.
However, my musical isolationism was gradually being breached. I began hearing the works of other composers and realising that some of them were very good indeed. At first the highest compliment I could pay any composer was to say that I liked him almost as well as Sullivan; then the liberating realisation occurred to me that I didn't have to like Sullivan any less in order to like the other composers as well or even better.
During my student days I heard Charles Marowitz lecturing on his philosophy that masterpieces exist to be raped, and saw his remarkable production of Dr. Faustus at Glasgow's Close Theatre. This dynamic and stimulating theatrical experience impelled me possibly to the conclusion that an informed, serious, respectful and experimental approach to established classics might not necessarily be bad after all - might, in fact, produce something really worth while. It was beginning to dawn on me, too, that other musical and dramatic works had no need of such protection as copyright and a rigid tradition in order to remain viable. My loyalty to G & S now recoiled on itself, for how could I maintain that works as good as I knew the Savoy operas to be were less able to stand on their own feet than other, inferior pieces?
The final conversion came through Ayrshire Philharmonic whose productions, always excellent, and always orthodox - I had attended for years. A new producer was about to take over: a man much more knowledgeable and imaginative than amateur players very often are. Princess Ida was the company's choice for that year: I had recently seen it for the first time (it was the last opera in the canon, by years, that I had got to know), and had to admit that it was dramatically far below Gilbert's usual standard. Nevertheless, I listened with something approaching horror to my friend's proposals to develop the unsatisfactory characters of Ida & Blanche, alter the feeble dénouement, relate the dialogue more closely to modern English, and set the action, not in medieval times but at the period of the struggle for female suffrage. Would this work - or would it be what it had been nicknamed in advance, The Rape of Princess Ida? Well, it did work. And I still would defy anyone to deny that this experiment was worth while.
So: what, now, could be done with G & S? And why was nothing done with it except more and more imaginative and unimaginative productions? My old love of G & S, now set in the context of a much wider knowledge of music and drama was impelling me to a new conclusion: why should these splendid works be kept caged? It was precisely because most people knew them, if at all, only through tired and enfeebled productions mirroring the stage techniques of the 1880s, that they were regarded with undeserved disdain: music critics would be forced to take notice of the operas if they were presented to them in a fresh and lively light. Because note, I still believe and trust from a much better informed opinion than before, that the much higher international reputation of Offenbach, Strauss, Lehar, and the rest is woefully misguided: Sullivan has more musical value than any two of them together. Put the G&S operas beside those others, let them speak for themselves, unhampered by fossilised, production techniques, and let the European operettists look to their laurels!
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