Sunday Classics snapshots: Aren't the jolly boys and girls of "The Gondoliers" really somebodies after all?

"The Piazzetta in Venice, Looking East with the Doge's Palace, the Columns of Saint Mark and Saint Theodore, the Riva degli Schiavoni and the Bacino di San Marco," oil painting by Bernardo Bellotto (1722-1780)

GILBERT and SULLIVAN: The Gondoliers: Act I, Francesco, Good morrow, pretty maids . . . Antonio, For the merriest fellows are we

During the previous chorus, in which the CONTADINE (peasant girls) have been discovered in the Piazzetta in Venice arranging floral bouquets, ANTONIO, FRANCESCO, GIORGIO, and other GONDOLIERS have entered unobserved by the girls -- at first two, then two more, then half a dozen, then the remainder.

FRANCESCO: Good morrow, pretty maids. For whom prepare ye
these floral tributes extraordinary?
FIAMETTA: For Marco and Giuseppe Palmieri,
the pink and flower of all the gondolieri.
GIULIA: They're coming here, as we have heard but lately,
to choose two brides from us who sit sedately.
ANTONIO: Do all you maidens love them?
CONTADINE: Passionately!
ANTONIO: These gondoliers are to be envied greatly.
GIORGIO: But what of us, who one and all adore you?
Have pity on our passion, we implore you!
FIAMETTA: These gentlemen must make their choice before you.
VITTORIA: In the meantime we tacitly ignore you.
GIULIA: When they have chosen two, that leaves you plenty.
Two dozen we, and ye are four and twenty!
FIAMETTA and VITTORIA : Till then, enjoy your dolce far niente!
ANTONIO : With pleasure, nobody contradicente!
Song, Antonio and Contadine
ANTONIO : For the merriest fellows are we, tra la.
CONTADINE: Tra la, tra la, tra la, tra la-la-la, tra-la-la-la la.
ANTONIO : That ply on the emerald sea, tra la.
CONTADINE: Tra la, tra la, tra la, tra la-la-la, tra-la-la-la la.
ANTONIO : With loving and laughing
and quipping and quaffing,
we're happy as happy can be, tra la.
With loving and laughing
and quipping and quaffing,
we're happy as happy can be, tra la.
ALL: Tra la-la-la-la, etc.
ANTONIO : With sorrow we've nothing to do, tra la.
CONTADINE: Tra la, tra la, tra la, tra la-la-la, tra-la-la-la la.
ANTONIO : And care is a thing we pooh-pooh, tra la.
CONTADINE: Tra la, tra la, tra la, tra la-la-la, tra-la-la-la la.
ANTONIO : And jealousy yellow,
unfortunate fellow,
we drown in the shimmering blue, tra la.
And jealousy yellow,
unfortunate fellow,
we drown in the shimmering blue, tra la.
ALL: Tra la-la-la-la-la-la-la, etc.

Alexander Young (t), Francesco; Stella Hitchens (s), Fiametta; Helen Watts (c), Giulia; James Milligan (bs-b), Antonio; James Milligan (bs-b), Giorgio; Lavinia Renton (s), Vittoria; Glyndebourne Festival Chorus, Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded Mar. 11-15, 1957

Dawn Bradshaw (s), Fiametta; Joseph Riordan (t), Francesco; Daphne Gill (ms), Giulia; Michael Wakeham (b), Antonio; George Cook (b), Giorgio; Ceinwen Jones (s), Vittoria; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus, New Symphony Orchestra of London, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded September 1960

Enid Walsh (s), Fiametta; Thomas Hancock (t), Francesco; Joyce Wright (ms), Giulia; Geoffrey Sanders (b), Antonio; Radley Flynn (bs), Giorgio; Yvonne Dean (ms), Vittoria; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus, New Promenade Orchestra of London, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded Mar. 11, 1950

by Ken

This week's late-scheduled musical snapshot is kind of blurry, I'm afraid, but seems important nevertheless. I expected to be proceeding, finally, with Part 2 of the "Sound of Aging, Verdi-style" miniseries I began a few weeks ago with Giorgio Germont's calculatedly fatigue-ridden appeal to his wayward son Alfredo to abandon wicked Paris and come home to beautiful, sunny, wholesome Provence -- in the form of the celebrated baritone aria "Di Provenza il mar, il suol." But Friday night I attended a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers which went beyond good-or-bad (there were good things and there were bad things) to show me something about the piece I've never heard before, and that's always exciting.


THE PROBLEM IS . . .

While I can try to describe what it is I heard, and will do so in a moment, I not only can't describe it very well but don't really have a good musical snapshot to offer. Because if I had ready musical illustrations of what I heard, I would already have heard it before Friday night.

You have to understand that The Gondoliers is a piece I love. And while I remembered having gotten involved in it in a previous post or two, I didn't expect to find the million or so audio files I'd previously made, mostly for a pair of August 2013 posts (with previews), "Gilbert and Sullivan's gondoliers try to temper monarchy with republican equality" and "Dance a cachucha! Returning to the Gondoliers Overture" -- the latter starting with the musical material from the opera which is heard in the Overture, then proceeding to a couple more additions. By the end we'd had a surprisingly full sampling of the piece.


SO WHAT IS THIS THING I HEARD ALREADY?

Okay, it's niceness. There is, I suddenly heard, a musical quality of niceness, of musical good mental health and openness and, how shall I say it, deservingness in the characterization of the two dozen gondoliers and two dozen contadine who are whisked out of their happy Venetian existence to fantasies of royalty (republican-style royalty, yes, but still royalty) only to wind up back where they started, but now all happily coupled and thoroughly content with their restored existence.

It's not that they aren't poked fun at, these lads and lasses. The boys aren't all that bright, but they have the girls to fill in those gaps -- as well as certain other gaps in their existence. But they all have good and open hearts, and the boys and girls both need and have each other.

This is actually the more surprising in that The Gondoliers, the tenth and last of the "canonical" G and S operas was written at a time of considerable strain between its creators, both creative and personal. Creatively, they were coming off the ordeal of the writing of The Yeomen of the Guard, which as I think we've seen is in some ways their most remarkable creation but still has its problems, and had unquestionably taken a toll on both Gilbert and Sullivan.

Gilbert was also in an exceedingly untrusting frame of mind, with the long-running success of the Savoy company making its members more independent and demanding. The obvious result is the spreading around of the new piece's "leading" roles to an unprecedented number of characters. He clearly wasn't in an exceptionally generous frame of mind, and there is considerable satiric bite in the libretto he produced. And yet he provided the material for Sullivan to, well, bathe these folks in sunshine.

I'm sorry I can't explain it better than that, and I don't know that we'll hear much of what I'm talking about in the musical examples. The one thing that occurred to me is that, in remarkable opening scene, those nearly 20 minutes of uninterrupted music, when the gondoliers express their jealousy in the face of the ladies' shared passion for those gondolier gods Marco and Giuseppe Palmieri, as Giulia points out:

When they have chosen two, that leaves you plenty.
Two dozen we, and ye are four and twenty!

And so it works out. I invite you to listen to the whole of the opening scene, noting in particular Marco and Giuseppe introducing themselves in the duet "We're called gondolieri."

GILBERT and SULLIVAN: The Gondoliers: Opening Scene


Stella Hitchens (s), Fiametta; Alexander Young (t), Francesco; Helen Watts (c), Giulia; James Milligan (bs-b), Antonio; James Milligan (bs-b), Giorgio; Lavinia Renton (s), Vittoria; Richard Lewis (t), Marco Palmieri; John Cameron (b), Giuseppe Palmieri; Marjorie Thomas (c), Tessa; Elsie Morison (s), Gianetta; Glyndebourne Festival Chorus, Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded Mar. 11-15, 1957

Dawn Bradshaw (s), Fiametta; Joseph Riordan (t), Francesco; Daphne Gill (ms), Giulia; Michael Wakeham (b), Antonio; George Cook (b), Giorgio; Ceinwen Jones (s), Vittoria; Thomas Round (t), Marco Palmieri; Alan Styler (b), Giuseppe Palmieri; Joyce Wright (ms), Tessa; Mary Sansom (s), Gianetta; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus, New Symphony Orchestra of London, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded September 1960

Enid Walsh (s), Fiametta; Thomas Hancock (t), Francesco; Joyce Wright (ms), Giulia; Geoffrey Sanders (b), Antonio; Radley Flynn (bs), Giorgio; Yvonne Dean (ms), Vittoria; Leonard Osborn (t), Marco Palmieri; Alan Styler (b), Giuseppe Palmieri; Yvonne Dean (ms), Tessa; Muriel Harding (s), Gianetta; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus, New Promenade Orchestra, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded Mar. 11, 1950

At the end of the opera, after it turns out that neither of the brothers is the stolen-in-infancy king of Barataria, that they really are just the Palmieri brothers, son of Baptisto, the whole lot of gondoliers and contadine sing a jolly reprise of this duet, "Once more gondolieri," which brings the show to a close. (I would have played that for you, but the Blogger software is giving me fits just now, actually vandalizing pasted-in code -- have I mentioned lately that Google sucks? spread the word! -- and that's more trouble than I'm prepared to take on at this moment.)


I MIGHT ADD THAT THIS NEW LIGHT PERHAPS
CONNECTS TO A SONG I EVOKE FREQUENTLY

I mean the song in which the dour Grand Inquisitor attempts to debunk the boys' egalitarian vision, arriving at the conclusion, "When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody."

GILBERT AND SULLIVAN: The Gondoliers: Act II, Song, Grand Inquisitor, "There lived a king as I've been told"

DON ALHAMBRA: There lived a king, as I've been told,
In the wonder-working days of old,
When hearts were twice as good as gold,
And twenty times as mellow.
Good temper triumphed in his face,
And in his heart he found a place
For all the erring human race
And every wretched fellow.
When he had Rhenish wine to drink
It made him very sad to think
That some, at junket or at jink,
Must be content with toddy.
MARCO and GIUSEPPE: With toddy, must be content with toddy.
DON ALHAMBRA: He wished all men as rich as he
(And he was rich as rich could be),
So to the top of every tree
Promoted everybody.
MARCO and GIUSEPPE: Now, that's the kind of king for me.
He wished all men as rich as he,
So to the top of every tree
Promoted everybody!
DON ALHAMBRA: Lord chancellors were cheap as sprats,
And bishops in their shovel hats
Were plentiful as tabby cats--
In point of fact, too many.
Ambassadors cropped up like hay,
Prime ministers and such as they
Grew like asparagus in May,
And dukes were three a penny.
On every side field marshals gleamed,
Small beer were lords-lieutenant deemed,
With admirals the ocean teemed
All round his wide dominions.
MARCO and GIUSEPPE: All round his wide dominions.
DON ALHAMBRA: And party leaders you might meet
In twos and threes in every street
Maintaining, with no little heat,
Their various opinions.
MARCO and GIUSEPPE: Now that's a sight you couldn't beat --
Two party leaders in each street
Maintaining, with no little heat,
Their various opinions.
DON ALHAMBRA: That king, although no one denies
His heart was of abnormal size,
Yet he'd have acted otherwise
If he had been acuter.
The end is easily foretold,
When every blessed thing you hold
Is made of silver, or of gold,
You long for simple pewter.
When you have nothing else to wear
But cloth of gold and satins rare,
For cloth of gold you cease to care--
Up goes the price of shoddy.
MARCO and GIUSEPPE: Up goes the price of shoddy.
DON ALHAMBRA: In short, whoever you may be,
To this conclusion you'll agree,
When every one is somebodee,
Then no one's anybody!
MARCO and GIUSEPPE: Now that's as plain as plain can be,
To this conclusion we agree--
ALL: When every one is somebodee,
Then no one's anybody!

Owen Brannigan (bs), Don Alhambra del Bolero; Richard Lewis (t), Marco Palmieri; John Cameron (b), Giuseppe Palmieri; Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded Mar. 11-15, 1957

Kenneth Sandford (b), Don Alhambra; Thomas Round (t), Marco Palmieri; Alan Styler (b), Giuseppe Palmieri; New Symphony Orchestra of London, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded September 1960

I'm always inspired by that good old king's vision. And now I wonder whether the opera really bears out the Grand Inquisitor's down-hearted conclusion. Are these people really nobodies?

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