Ruddigore
Ruddigore; or, The Witch's Curse, originally called Ruddygore, is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy Operas and the tenth of fourteen comic operas written together by Gilbert and Sullivan.[1] It was first performed by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company at the Savoy Theatre in London on 22 January 1887.
The first night was not altogether a success, as critics and the audience felt that Ruddygore (as it was then called) did not measure up to its predecessor, The Mikado. After some changes, including respelling the title, it achieved a run of 288 performances. The piece was profitable,[2] and the reviews were not all bad. For instance, The Illustrated London News praised the work of both Gilbert and, especially, Sullivan: "Sir Arthur Sullivan has eminently succeeded alike in the expression of refined sentiment and comic humour. In the former respect, the charm of graceful melody prevails; while, in the latter, the music of the most grotesque situations is redolent of fun."[3]
There were further changes and cuts, including a new overture, when Rupert D'Oyly Carte revived Ruddigore after the First World War. Although never a big money-spinner, it remained in the repertoire until the company closed in 1982. A centenary revival at Sadler's Wells in London restored the opera to almost its original first-night state. In 2000, Oxford University Press published a scholarly edition of the score and libretto, edited by Sullivan scholar David Russell Hulme. This restores the work as far as possible to the state in which its authors left it and includes a substantial introduction that explains many of the changes, with appendices containing some music deleted early in the run. After the expiration of the British copyright on Gilbert and Sullivan works in 1961, and especially since the Sadler's Wells production and recording, various directors have experimented with restoring some or all of the cut material in place of the 1920s D'Oyly Carte version.
Analysis of music and text[edit]
Musical content[edit]
The Sullivan scholar Gervase Hughes characterised Sir Roderic's song "When the night wind howls" as "unquestionably the finest piece of descriptive music that Sullivan ever wrote, worthy of a place beside Schubert's Erlkönig, Wagner's overture to The Flying Dutchman, and well above Saint-Saëns' Danse macabre, all of which are tone-paintings in a similar colour. Although the vocal score gives not a hint of the uncanny brilliance of the orchestration, it demonstrates the sure footholds by which the music in a round dozen bars finds its way from D minor to A flat major and back and the shattering impact of the fortissimo chorus entry at an interrupted cadence on the chord of B flat major. The progressions that follow look to be unusual, but if we study them carefully we realise that here Sullivan is not feeling his way in unfamiliar territory. Rather we may find in these few bars an apotheosis of his matured harmonic resource."[53]
The four D'Oyly Carte Opera Company recordings (1924, 1931, 1950, 1962) substantially reflect the 1920s cuts and alterations, although they differ in some details. None of these four recordings include Robin's Act II recitative and patter song. There is no commercial recording of Ruddigore as Gilbert and Sullivan left it, but the 1987 New Sadler's Wells recording largely presents the opera with the materials that were included on its first night.[66]
The Gilbert and Sullivan Discography judges that the best commercial recording is the New Sadler's Wells disc and that, of those by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, the 1924 and 1962 recordings are best.[82] It also asserts that the Brent Walker video of Ruddigore is one of the stronger entries in that series.[83] More recent professional productions have been recorded on video by the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival.[84]
Selected recordings
Adaptations of the opera have included the following.
References in literature have included several novels in which the setting of the story involved a production of Ruddigore, such as Murder and Sullivan by Sara Hoskinson Frommer (1997)[92] and Ruddy Gore by Kerry Greenwood (2004; the 7th Phryne Fisher book).[93] The Ghosts' High Noon by John Dickson Carr (1969) was named for the song of the same name in Ruddigore.[94] In "Runaround", a story from Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, a robot in a state similar to drunkenness sings snippets of "There Grew a Little Flower". In chapter 12 of John Myers Myers' novel Silverlock Sir Despard appears and admits that he fakes his evil acts; the locals are so used to this that he needs to pay the girls extra to scream when abducted.[95]
Plot elements from G&S operas entered subsequent musicals; for example, 1937's Me and My Girl features a portrait gallery of ancestors that, like the portraits in Ruddigore, come alive to remind their descendant of his duty.[96] The "Matter Patter" trio is used (with some changed lyrics) in Papp's Broadway production of The Pirates of Penzance, and the tune of the song is used as "The Speed Test" in the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie. It is also sung in a season 5 episode of Spitting Image where Labour leader Neil Kinnock is portrayed singing a self-parody to the tune.[97] The same song is pastiched in the documentary film Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony.[98] In the Doctor Who Big Finish Productions audio, Doctor Who and the Pirates, songs from Ruddigore and other G&S operas are parodied.
Ruddigore is mentioned in the law case of Banks v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs, 634 A.2d 433, 441 fn. 1 (D.C. 1993), which cites Ruddigore's admonition to "blow your own trumpet". A production of "Ruddigore" is the main plot point in Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Season 1 Episode 6, "Ruddy Gore", based on the Phryne Fisher novel of the same name. The stars of the opera are being killed off in an effort to bankrupt the production company.[99]