Gilbert & Sullivan

During a trivia night, I asked a group of teenagers to fill in the blank: "For I am the very model of a [blank]."

Blank indeed: blank stares all around.



Gilbert wrote the words, Sullivan wrote the music, and they were a big hit in their day. Patter songs, like that of the Major-General, were a feature in their operettas. So was patent silliness, like the encores in this trio. John Reed was a legendary G&S performer, and one imagines that his work with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is representative of how the shows were performed when they were originally produced.



I can't resist Todd Rundgren and Taj Mahal having their go at it, but John Reed was better.



We could go on. The movie of The Pirates of Penzance is a perfectly good starting point for G&S noobs, although fans of the Marx Brothers might prefer the 1920ish The Mikado with Eric Idle. It doesn't matter. Either way, don't think of these as dead old examples of an art form that is long dead. Today's musical theater is nothing more than G&S in modern dress: singing, dancing and joking around at a high level. And the music is wonderful, and the lyrics, for the most part, timeless.

"Ring the merry bells on board-ship, wend the air with warbling wild."
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