W.S. Gilbert

W.S. Gilbert
Author: Jane W. Stedman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 424
Release: 1996
Genre: Composers
ISBN: 9780198161745

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) was the most brilliant dramatist of Victorian England. A daring and cynical playwright, the forerunner of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, he was also a prolific journalist and humorous poet (his Bab Ballads are still widely read), and he achieved worldwide fame through his long collaboration with the composer Arthur Sullivan, a collaboration that created such classics as H. M. S. Pinafore, The Mikado, and all the other Savoy operas. Now the story of this remarkable writer's life - and of his stormy relationship with Sullivan - is here chronicled by a renowned authority on Gilbert and on the theatrical and literary scene in Victorian London. For this biography, Jane W. Stedman has returned to original sources, has interviewed survivors, and has scoured a whole variety of Victorian periodicals for reviews, and personal comment. Gilbert emerges as a much more complex and interesting figure than has previously been thought. The book is a worthy companion piece to Arthur Jacobs's recent biography Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician.

Plays by W. S. Gilbert

Plays by W. S. Gilbert
Author: George Rowell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 206
Release: 1982-03-04
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780521235891

This edition includes four plays and one libretto, covering more than twenty years of the dramatist's career: The Palace of Truth (1870), Sweethearts (1874), Princess Toto (1876), Engaged (1877) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (1891). The collection demonstrates that Gilbert was an original dramatist in his own right. The sophisticated irony of his plays challenged the conventions of the Victorian burlesque and sentimental comedy by demanding, and receiving, an intelligent response from the audience. George Rowell's useful and thorough introduction, which presents the theatrical background to Gilbert's development, also shows the dramatist's influence on Pinero, Wilde and Shaw. Gilbert's style combines a technique rarely realistic and stretching to fantasy with a tone apparently cynical and in fact deeply pessimistic. This odd pairing of fantasy and fatalism was recognized by his own and later generations as 'Gilbertian' and the term has been widely applied even outside the theatre.

Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan
Author: Kurt Gänzl
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2021-10-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1438485476

In this, the first book to focus on the original cast members of the classic Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, world-renowned musical theater expert Kurt Gänzl provides a concise history of the writing and production of each opera, vividly colored by the often little-known life stories of these early performers. Meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated with rare photographs, Gilbert and Sullivan: The Players and the Plays delves into the professional and personal lives of the British and American actors and singers who created the celebrated "famous fourteen" Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan
Author: Carolyn Williams
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2012
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231148054

An examination of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas, and how parody was used in the culture wars of late-nineteenth-century England.

Alfred Gilbert's Aestheticism

Alfred Gilbert's Aestheticism
Author: Jason Edwards
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1351577115

Alfred Gilbert's Aestheticism presents the first sustained re-evaluation of the life and work of one of the most acclaimed sculptors of the late-Victorian period. Drawing on important new archival sources, this ground-breaking study challenges the customary assumption that Aestheticism was primarily a literary, painterly or architectural phenomena. Jason Edwards reveals both the diverse ways in which Gilbert's sculptures operated within the context of Aestheticism and also how these works provided a unique and provocative commentary on the history of masculine friendship and eroticism in the period leading up to and beyond the Wilde trials in 1895. Detailed readings are offered of the relationship of Gilbert's work to essays by Pater and Swinburne, poems, plays, and novels by Wilde and W. S. Gilbert, and paintings by Burne-Jones, Leighton, Rossetti, Solomon, Whistler, and Watts. With over 90 illustrations, including key contemporary photographs showing Gilbert's works in their original contexts, this book makes a major contribution to the field of Victorian sculpture studies.

A Most Ingenious Paradox

A Most Ingenious Paradox
Author: Gayden Wren
Publisher:
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2006
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780195301724

Most books written on Gilbert and Sullivan have focused on the authors rather than on their work. Examining all 14 operas in detail, this book offers a fresh look at the works themselves.

The Pirates of Penzance, Or, the Slave of Duty

The Pirates of Penzance, Or, the Slave of Duty
Author: William Schwenck Gilbert
Publisher: Franklin Classics
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2018-10-11
Genre:
ISBN: 9780342477395

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