We performed The Pirates of Penzance to two very appreciative audiences at the weekend. Samuel is not a big part but in the programme he gets top billing alongside the Major-General, the Pirate King, the Sergeant of Police and the Pirate Apprentice. I didn’t miss a cue…spoken or sung…so my reputation as a Journeyman Tenor is enhanced.

An early mention of The Pirates of Penzance is in a letter from Gilbert to Sullivan on 7th August 1879. ‘I have broken the neck of Act II,’ he wrote, ‘and see my way clearly to the end. I think it comes out very well. I’ve made great use of the Tarantara business in Act II. The police always sing Tarantara when they desire to work their courage to sticking-point. Through the agency of this talisman they are enabled to acquit themselves well when concealed.’

On 5th November 1879 Gilbert and Sullivan arrived in New York aboard the liner Bothnia. D’Oyly Carte came over a week later. The plan was to produce an authorized version of H.M.S. Pinafore. But in their bags were the words and music of The Pirates of Penzance and the outrageous plan of presenting it themselves in New York as the first ever premiere of an English opera in America. There were sound practical reasons for doing so.

In 1879 international copyright law was in such chaos that simultaneous production of The Pirates of Penzance in England and America seemed the only practical way to deal with the problem. So on 31st December 1879 there was to be a quiet début at the Royal Bijou Theatre in Paignton, Devon while simultaneously in New York they would have an American première. The first London production would follow 3-months later. So much for the best laid plans of mice and men.

There was a problem. Only half of The Pirates of Penzance had been written. Then there was another problem. Here is Sullivan in a letter to his mother: ‘I fear I left all my sketches of the last Act at home as I have searched everywhere for them. I would have telegraphed for them, but they could not have arrived in time. It is a great nuisance as I have to rewrite it all now, and can’t recollect every number I did.’ Whoops!

Arthur Sullivan locked himself away in his New York hotel in a desperate attempt to meet all the deadlines. He was promptly stricken with an old illness. As he dragged himself from his couch…writing all day and long into the nights…he was in considerable pain.

Sullivan’s diary records that on 17th December that ‘most of the music of Act I was shipped to England’ Then ’Went to rehearsal at theatre, 11 to 4. Came home tired, couldn’t work, dined at Betts. Very pleasant. Conducted at the theatre…’ He was conducting Pinafore in the evening, rehearsing Pirates in the day and there was still a lot of music to compose. ‘Returned to the Betts until 12. Then home. Wrote trio (2nd Act) and Ruth’s song 1st Act. Went to bed at 5.’ These are two of the most loved songs in the G&S repertoire…performed many hundreds of times every year.

Sullivan would often deliberately ‘keep the music down’ so that Gilbert’s all-important words would come over clearly. Those who deride the um-cha-um-cha accompaniments in some G & S songs fail to understand the need for such considerations. Sullivan would take the opportunity to build up the music elsewhere in an opera. Indeed the Pirates of Penzance was coming from his pen as the most operatic opera to date…and even included some burlesquing of ‘the farm-yard effects’ in Italian Grand Opera…notably in the waltz song Poor Wandering One.

This had consequences. The band went on strike. Sullivan explains. ‘We had been rehearsing the Pirates and it was but two or three days before the performance that the whole band went on strike. They explained that the music was not ordinary operetta music but more like grand opera…their method is to charge according to a scale, so much per week for entr’acte music, with an ascending scale for operetta, and so on.’

Sullivan called the band together, told them he was flattered by the compliment they had paid his music and then explained that he would bring the Covent Garden orchestra across to New York and pending their arrival carry on rehearsing by ‘playing the pianoforte himself…with his friend Mr Alfred Cellier at the harmonium’. He then did an article for the New York Herald. The band backed down. Sometimes it is a useful thing to be up to your eyes in absurd plots. They have their uses in real life. Nonetheless a Composer’s Lot is not a Happy One…Happy One!