Diane Canwell - The Pocket Guide to Gilbert and Sullivan

G ilbert and Sullivan would become the fathers of the modern blockbuster musical. They created a formula that almost guaranteed theatrical success. Their musicals were melodic and funny and they would continue to attract literally millions of fans to this very day. It was one of the first musical marriages; an artistic partnership, a testing one for the pair of them, and one that was often punctuated with disputes and quarrels. Yet their partnership would become the blueprint for the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Lloyd Webber and Rice, to name but a few. Gilbert and Sullivan created 14 light operas and so popular would they become that they have been, and continue to be, performed by professional and amateur groups across the world.

Gilbert was born in the house of his grandfather, at 17 Southampton Street in London. His father was a naval surgeon and his mother was the daughter of a doctor. He had three younger sisters; Jane, Maud and Florence. They lived at 4 Portland Place in Hammersmith and at the age of two Gilbert, whilst being looked after by a maid, was kidnapped in Naples, his parents paying 25 for his safe return. Interestingly, child kidnap would be part of the plots of HMS Pinafore , The Gondoliers and The Pirates of Penzance , so the experience obviously left an indelible mark on him.

Gilberts parents separated when he was 19 and it seems clear that he did not come from a particularly happy home. Again shades of his upbringing often emerged in the work that he would write later in life. When Gilbert was seven he was at school in Boulogne and was a fluent French speaker. By the age of 13 he was at Great Ealing School.

A portrait of Gilbert by Frank Holl dated 1886, which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery .

In Gilberts own words:

He speedily won the reputation of being a clever, bright boy, who was extremely lazy. It was soon discovered, however, that he could work so quickly that his natural tendency to idleness was no handicap to his abilities.

He was at a school that had taught distinguished writers such as Huxley and Thackeray. Out of school he was interested in drawing and reading, but he was already fascinated by the theatre. Again Gilbert said:

Under the influence of social intercourse with many literary and theatrical friends who frequented his fathers house, his bias for the stage naturally entered largely into his ambitions.

Gilbert played Guy Fawkes in a melodrama at school and when he was 15 he saw the actor Charles Kean in The Corsican Brothers . Kean knew Gilberts father and sent him back to school when Gilbert turned up at the theatre and asked him for a job.

By the age of 16 Gilbert had become head boy at his school and was also fluent in Latin and Greek. He loved reading Edward Lear and Charles Dickens. After Great Ealing School, Gilbert went to Kings College, London, to study law in 1853. He also decided that he would try to get a commission in the Royal Artillery. He was fascinated by the Crimean War and uniforms; this would be another enduring part of the operas that he would write in the future. At this stage Gilbert fully intended to become a soldier: