Ivanhoe is a romantic opera in three acts based on the 1819 novel by Sir Walter Scott, with music by Sir Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by Julian Sturgis. It premiered at the Royal English Opera House on 31 January 1891 for a consecutive run of 155 performances, a record for a grand opera.Ivanhoe at The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive. This has been surpassed only by Broadway's 2003 production of La bohème. Later that year it was performed six more times, making a total of 161 performances.Dailey, Chapter 7 It was toured by Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1894–1895 but has rarely been performed since. The first complete, fully professional recording was released in 2010 on the Chandos Records label.
Background After the days of Michael William Balfe and his contemporaries, the fashion in London, led by the Prince of Wales, was for opera houses to present mostly imported operas from Italy, France and Germany. English opera went into decline, and no through-composed operas were written in England after 1844 until 1874.Gordon-Powell, Robin. Ivanhoe, full score, Introduction, vol. I, pp. VII to VIII, 2008, The Amber Ring After this, a few English composers wrote new operas in English, some with English themes, and the Carl Rosa Opera Company produced many of these in the late 1870s and 1880s.Lamb (1973), p. 475 Arthur Sullivan had long dreamed of writing a grand opera in what he called an "eclectic" style that would build on the existing European styles. In an 1885 interview, he said: "The opera of the future is a compromise. I have thought and worked and toiled and dreamt of it. Not the French school, with gaudy and tinsel tunes, its lambent lights and shades, its theatrical effects and clap-trap; not the Wagnerian school, with its somberness and heavy ear-splitting airs, with its mysticism and unreal sentiment; not the Italian school, with its fantastic airs and fioriture and far-fetched effects. It is a compromise between these three – a sort of eclectic school, a selection of the merits of each one. I myself will make an attempt to produce a grand opera of this new school. ... Yes, it will be an historical work, and it is the dream of my life. I do not believe in opera based on gods and myths. That is the fault of the German school. It is metaphysical music – it is philosophy. What we want are plots that give rise to characters of flesh and blood, with human emotions and human passions. Music should speak to the heart, and not to the head. Such a work as I contemplate will take some time.""Sir Arthur Sullivan: A Talk With the Composer of Pinafore", San Francisco Chronicle, 22 July 1885
During the late 1870s and through the 1880s, Richard D'Oyly Carte had earned great success by producing the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. By the late 1880s, perhaps encouraged by the operas produced by Carl Rosa,According to critic Herman Klein, the operas produced by Carl Rosa raised "a general feeling that an era of prosperity had dawned for opera which would be British through and through". See Klein, The Golden Age of Opera, 1933, quoted in Lamb, p. 475 Carte aspired to do for grand opera what he had done for comic opera, with the assistance of Arthur Sullivan, who had long yearned to compose more serious works. In May 1888, Sullivan noted in his diary that, after a performance of his cantata The Golden Legend given at Albert Hall by command of Queen Victoria, the queen said to him, "You ought to write a grand opera – you would do it so well!"Gordon-Powell, Robin. Ivanhoe, full score, Introduction, vol. I, p. IX, 2008, The Amber Ring Carte began building the Royal English Opera House in December 1888, and he commissioned Sullivan to write the venture's inaugural work. George Bernard Shaw wondered, in August 1889, about the wisdom of building a new opera house when the three existing ones (Royal Opera House, Her Majesty's Theatre and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane), were underutilised.Shaw, G. B. The Star, 16 August 1889 During 1890, Carte contacted several composers, including Frederick Cowen, asking them to compose operas to succeed Ivanhoe in the new house.
Sullivan asked his usual collaborator W. S. Gilbert to supply the libretto for a grand opera, but Gilbert declined, writing that in grand opera the librettist's role is subordinate to that of the composer, and that the public would, in any case, not accept a serious work from his pen. Gilbert recommended Julian Sturgis to write the libretto. Sturgis had written the libretto for Nadeshda by Arthur Thomas (1885), which had been produced with success by Carl Rosa. Ivanhoe had been treated operatically previously, including an 1826 pastiche opera with music by Rossini and operas by Marschner in 1829, Pacini in 1832 and Nicolai in 1840. Both Sullivan and the critics noted that Scott's novel, with its many scenes, would make for a complex adaptation.Lamb (1973), p. 476 Sturgis set to work on Ivanhoe in the spring or early summer of 1889. The libretto uses some of the language directly from the novel and does not change the basic story. However, in condensing the lengthy and action-packed novel for a stage work, the libretto relies on the audience's knowledge of the novel and omits many scenes, also entirely omitting the characters of Gurth the Swineherd, Oswald, Cedric's manservant, some of King John's advisors, and Athelstane the Unready, among others. Richard Traubner, writes in Opera News, that "Sturgis's libretto, given his quotes from Scott and the quasi-medieval English, is still sketchy, and the complex story does not really move forward with any operatic satisfaction."
While Sturgis worked on Ivanhoe, Sullivan was composing The Gondoliers, with a libretto by Gilbert, for the Savoy Theatre. After The Gondoliers opened and Sullivan took his annual holiday in Monte Carlo, he finally began the composition of Ivanhoe in May 1890, finishing the score in December 1890. Chorus rehearsals for Ivanhoe began in November, with Alfred Cellier as chorus master, and his brother François Cellier, who became musical director of the new theatre.Gordon-Powell, Robin. Ivanhoe, full score, Introduction, vol. I, p. X, 2008, The Amber Ring In April 1890, Gilbert had challenged Carte over partnership expenses at the Savoy Theatre, including a new carpet for the lobby. To Gilbert's surprise and indignation, Sullivan sided with Carte – after all, Carte was producing his opera – and Gilbert sued Carte and Sullivan in May. The lawsuit was ongoing during much of the period of composition of Ivanhoe, and Sullivan wrote to Gilbert in September 1890 that he was "physically and mentally ill over this wretched business. I have not yet got over the shock of seeing our names coupled ... in hostile antagonism over a few miserable pounds".Lamb (1973), p. 477 Sullivan completed the score too late to meet Carte's planned production date, and costs mounted as the producer had to pay performers, crew and others, while the theatre sat empty. Sullivan was required to pay Carte a contractual penalty of £3,000 for his delay.Jacobs, pp. 328–29Ainger, p. 322
Production and aftermath
Ivanhoe and The Royal English Opera House opened on 31 January 1891, with the Prince and Princess of Wales and other members of the royal family in attendance.Gordon-Powell, Robin. Ivanhoe, full score, Introduction, vol. I, p. XI, 2008, The Amber Ring The production was lavish: An orchestra of 64 players, 72 choristers and 120 supernumeraries were employed. Percy Anderson designed the costumes, Hawes Craven and others designed the sets, staging was by Hugh Moss, and François Cellier and Ernest Ford alternated as conductors. Ford also arranged the piano score for Ivanhoe. In the opening night programme, Carte set forth his goals: I am endeavouring to establish English Grand Opera at the New Theatre which I have built.... Whether [the experiment] will succeed or not depends on whether there is a sufficient number of persons interested in music and the drama who will come forward and fill the theatre.... I have made arrangements with other distinguished composers and authors to write operas to follow Ivanhoe, which operas will be produced if the enterprise is a pecuniary success. The intention is to 'run' each opera, that is to say, to play it six times a week, at any rate at first. This is the only way in which the expenditure necessary to secure a proper representation in the matter of scenery and costumes can be recouped.... It rests with [the public] whether a National Opera House shall be established on a permanent basis or not.
Thus, departing from the usual practice for grand opera to be presented in repertory, Carte presented Ivanhoe every night, with alternative singers being provided for the chief roles – not as separate 'first' and 'second' casts, but in different mixtures.Jacobs, Arthur, Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician. Oxford University Press (1984) One cast member who went on to a fine career was the young tenor, Joseph O'Mara, in the title role. R. Scott Fishe, a member of the chorus, later became a principal performer with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company at the Savoy Theatre. No expense was spared to make the production a success, including "every imaginable effect of scenic splendour"."Hesketh Pearson, Gilbert and Sullivan The opera ran for an unprecedented 155 consecutive performancesTraubner, Richard. "Sullivan: Ivanhoe". Opera News, June 2010 – Vol. 74, No. 12 and had strong revenues at first. It received very favourable press, with a few reports expressing reservations about the libretto. Of more than a dozen opening night reviews, only Shaw's and Fuller Maitland's reviews were negative.Gordon-Powell, Robin. Ivanhoe, full score, Introduction, vol. I, p. XII, 2008, The Amber Ring
Ivanhoe closed in July, when the opera house closed for the summer at the end of the opera season. When the house re-opened in November, after a delay, Carte produced André Messager's La Basoche (with David Bispham in his first London stage performance) alternating in repertory with six more performances of Ivanhoe (which ran at a substantial loss this time), and then La Basoche alone, closing in January 1892. Though praised, La Basoche could not fill the large house, and losses were mounting. Carte had commissioned new operas from Cowen, Thomas, Herman Bemberg and Hamish MacCunn.. Although Bemberg's opera Elaine was finished, and Cowen's Signa would be completed in March, Carte evidently had decided that producing these would be impracticable or too expensive and that he could not make a success of the new house.Gordon-Powell, Robin. Ivanhoe, full score, Introduction, vol. I, pp. XII–XIII, 2008, The Amber Ring. The Pall Mall Gazette wrote, "The question, then, uppermost is whether Londoners really want English opera at all.... Mr D'Oyly Carte is to be pitied, and it is hard to see how he can continue to throw his operatic pearls before those who do not value them. After all, the Englishman's opera-house is the music-hall."The Pall Mall Gazette, 16 January 1892