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The Wicked World
''The Wicked World'' is a blank verse play by W. S. Gilbert in three acts. It opened at the Haymarket Theatre on 1873 and ran for a successful 145 performances, closing on 1873. The play is an allegory loosely based on a short illustrated story of the same title by Gilbert, written in 1871 and published in Tom Hood's ''Comic Annual'', about how pure fairies cope with a sudden introduction to them of "mortal love." Set in "Fairy Land", the action occurs within the space of 24 hours. Gilbert envisioned the set as resembling John Martin's 1853 painting ''The Plains of Heaven'': vaporous mountains and headlands around ethereal blue and a flowering slope on which sit white-clad angels. Gilbert also specified that the women characters 'in costume & general appearance – should suggest the idea rather of angels than of conventional fairies, and they exhibit an 'overweening sense of righteousness,' arising from their freedom from sin. Background W. S. Gilbert created several blan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wicked World - Illustrated London News, Feb 8 1873
Wicked may refer to: Books * Wicked, a minor character in the ''X-Men'' universe * '' Wicked'', a 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire that inspired the musical of the same name * ''Wicked'', the fifth novel in Sara Shepard's ''Pretty Little Liars'' series * ''Wicked'', a young adult novel series written by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguié * ''Wicked'', a 1997 novel series collaboration between Australian children's authors Paul Jennings and Morris Gleitzman Film, television and stage * ''Wicked'' (musical), a 2003 musical based on the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel * ''Wicked'' (1931 film), a musical film starring Bailey Morley and Victor McLaglen * ''The Wicked'' (1991 film), Italian film directed by Carlo Lizzani * ''Wicked'' (1998 film), a 1998 film starring Julia Stiles * ''Wicked!'' (TV series), a 2000 Australian animated series * ''The Wicked'' (2013 film), American film directed by Peter Winther * '' Wicked: Part One'' and '' Wicked: Part Two'', an upcoming two-part film ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charity (play)
''Charity'' is a drama in four acts by W. S. Gilbert that explores the issue of a woman who had lived with a man as his wife without ever having married. The play analyses and critiques the double standard in the Victorian era concerning the treatment of men and women who had sex outside of marriage, anticipating the "problem plays" of Shaw and Ibsen.Crowther, AndrewSynopsis of ''Charity'' It opened on 3 January 1874 at the Haymarket Theatre in London, where Gilbert had previously presented his 'fairy comedies' ''The Palace of Truth'', '' Pygmalion and Galatea'', and ''The Wicked World''. ''Charity'' ran for about 61 performances, closing on 14 March 1874, and received tours and revivals thereafter. Gilbert created several plays for the Haymarket Theatre, managed by John Baldwin Buckstone and starring William Hunter Kendal and his wife, Madge Robertson Kendal, sister of the playwright Thomas William Robertson, in the early 1870s. In ''Charity'', Gilbert wanted to use what he per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Yeomen Of The Guard
''The Yeomen of the Guard; or, The Merryman and His Maid'', is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 3 October 1888 and ran for 423 performances. This was the eleventh collaboration of fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan. The opera is set in the Tower of London during the 16th century, and is the darkest, and perhaps most emotionally engaging, of the Savoy Operas, ending with a broken-hearted main character and two very reluctant engagements, rather than the usual numerous marriages. The libretto does contain considerable humour, including a lot of pun-laden one-liners, but Gilbert's trademark satire and topsy-turvy plot complications are subdued in comparison with the other Gilbert and Sullivan operas. The dialogue, though in prose, is quasi-Shakespearean, or early modern English, in style. Critics considered the score to be Sullivan's finest, including its overture, which is in sonata form, rather ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Utopia, Limited
''Utopia, Limited; or, The Flowers of Progress'', is a Savoy opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was the second-to-last of Gilbert and Sullivan's fourteen collaborations, premiering on 7 October 1893 for a run of 245 performances. It did not achieve the success of most of their earlier productions. Gilbert's libretto satirises limited liability companies, and particularly the idea that a bankrupt company could leave creditors unpaid without any liability on the part of its owners. It also lampoons the Joint Stock Company Act by imagining the absurd convergence of natural persons (or sovereign nations) with legal commercial entities under the limited companies laws. In addition, it mocks the conceits of the late 19th-century British Empire and several of the nation's beloved institutions. In mocking the adoption by a "barbaric" country of the cultural values of an "advanced" nation, it takes a tilt at the cultural aspects of imperialis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thespis (opera)
''Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old'', is an operatic extravaganza that was the first collaboration between dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan. No musical score of ''Thespis'' was ever published, and most of the music has been lost. Gilbert and Sullivan went on to become the most famous and successful artistic partnership in Victorian England, creating a string of enduring comic opera hits, including '' H.M.S. Pinafore'', ''The Pirates of Penzance'' and ''The Mikado''. ''Thespis'' premièred in London at the Gaiety Theatre on 26 December 1871. Like many productions at that theatre, it was written in a broad, burlesque style, considerably different from Gilbert and Sullivan's later works. It was a success, for a Christmas entertainment of the time,Walters, Michael. "Thespis: a reply", ''W. S. Gilbert Society Journal'', Vol. 4, part 3, Issue 29. Summer 2011. and closed on 8 March 1872, after a run of 63 performances. It was advertised as "An entirely original ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Princess Ida
''Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant'' is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was their eighth operatic collaboration of fourteen. ''Princess Ida'' opened at the Savoy Theatre on 5 January 1884, for a run of 246 performances. The piece concerns a princess who founds a women's university and teaches that women are superior to men and should rule in their stead. The prince to whom she had been married in infancy sneaks into the university, together with two friends, with the aim of collecting his bride. They disguise themselves as women students, but are discovered, and all soon face a literal war between the sexes. The opera satirizes feminism, women's education and Darwinian evolution, which were controversial topics in conservative Victorian England. ''Princess Ida'' is based on a narrative poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson called '' The Princess'' (1847), and Gilbert had written a farcical musical play, based on the poem, in 1870. He li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iolanthe
''Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri'' () is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, first performed in 1882. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh of fourteen operatic collaborations by Gilbert and Sullivan. In the opera, the fairy Iolanthe has been banished from fairyland because she married a mortal; this is forbidden by fairy law. Her son, Strephon, is an Arcadia (utopia), Arcadian shepherd who wants to marry Phyllis, a Ward (law), Ward of Court of Chancery, Chancery. All the members of the House of Lords, House of Peers also want to marry Phyllis. When Phyllis sees Strephon hugging a young woman (not knowing that it is his mother – immortal fairies all appear young), she assumes the worst and sets off a climactic confrontation between the peers and the fairies. The opera satire, satirises many aspects of British government, law and society. The confrontation between the fairies and the peers is a version of one of Gilbert's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Princess (play)
''The Princess'' is a blank verse farcical play, in five scenes with music, by W. S. Gilbert which adapts and parodies Alfred Lord Tennyson's humorous 1847 narrative poem, '' The Princess''. It was first produced at the Olympic Theatre in London on 8 January 1870. Gilbert called the piece "a whimsical allegory ... a respectful operatic per-version" of Tennyson's poem. The play was a modest success, playing for about 82 performances through April and enjoying a provincial tour.Moss, Simon"The Princess"at ''Gilbert & Sullivan: a selling exhibition of memorabilia'', c20th.com, accessed 16 November 2009 Gilbert liked the theme so much that he adapted the play as the libretto to ''Princess Ida'' (1884), one of his Savoy Operas with Arthur Sullivan. ''The Princess'' is a satire of women's education, a controversial subject in 1847, when Queen's College first opened in London, and in 1870 ( Girton opened in 1869), but less so by 1884. Background ''The Princess'' came fairly early ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fallen Fairies
''Fallen Fairies''; ''or, The Wicked World'', is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Edward German. The story is an operatic adaptation of Gilbert's 1873 blank-verse fairy comedy, '' The Wicked World''. In Fairyland, the fairies are curious about wicked mortals, especially their strange capacity for love. They summon three mortal men from the world below to observe them and to teach the men how to live virtuously. The fairies fall in love with the mortals, become jealous of each other and behave badly. The men return to Earth, and the fairies realize that love is overrated. The piece premiered at London's Savoy Theatre on 15 December 1909. Gilbert directed the opera. Charles Herbert Workman produced and starred as Lutin. The cast also starred Gilbert protégée Nancy McIntosh as Selene, the Fairy Queen. McIntosh received negative reviews, and Workman soon replaced her with Amy Evans and made changes in the play that angered Gilbert, who sued Wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comic Opera
Comic opera, sometimes known as light opera, is a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending and often including spoken dialogue. Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, '' opera buffa'', emerged as an alternative to '' opera seria''. It quickly made its way to France, where it became '' opéra comique'', and eventually, in the following century, French operetta, with Jacques Offenbach as its most accomplished practitioner. The influence of the Italian and French forms spread to other parts of Europe. Many countries developed their own genres of comic opera, incorporating the Italian and French models along with their own musical traditions. Examples include German '' singspiel'', Viennese operetta, Spanish '' zarzuela'', Russian comic opera, English ballad and Savoy opera, North American operetta and musical comedy. Italian ''opera buffa'' In late 17th-century Italy, light-heart ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Happy Land
''The Happy Land'' is a play with music written in 1873 by W. S. Gilbert (under the pseudonym F. Latour Tomline) and Gilbert Arthur à Beckett. The musical play burlesques Gilbert's earlier play, ''The Wicked World''. The blank verse piece opened at the Royal Court Theatre on 3 March 1873 and enjoyed a highly successful run, soon touring, and then being immediately revived at the same theatre in the autumn of 1873.Joseph S Meisel (1999), The Importance of Being Serious: The Unexplored Connection between Gladstone and Humour', History 84 (274), p. 278–300. Rees, Terence. "''The Happy Land'': its true and remarkable history" in ''W. S. Gilbert Society Journal'' vol. 1, no. 8 (1994), pp. 228–37 The play created a scandal by breaking regulations against the portrayal of public characters, parodying William Ewart Gladstone, Robert Lowe, and Acton Smee Ayrton, respectively the Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and First Commissioner of Works. Three characters were mad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
