Ideal marriage

In all the heavier-duty excitement of Liszt’s anniversary I had failed to register that W.S. Gilbert expired 100 years ago; and, perhaps just as significant, the copyright of the D’Oyly Carte opera company expired 50 years ago. I am old enough to remember the fuss which that moment provoked — the highbrows hoping to kill off the whole dreadful phenomenon there and then; the not so high, including Harold Wilson and Spike Milligan, trying to extend it. The company muddled through to 1982, but finally the Arts Council had had enough, and a lot of well-educated people heaved a sigh of relief that the Savoy Operas had finally passed into history.

They were premature in their heaving. For a few years, the tradition did indeed seem to be down and out. Concerned parties continued to find, more noisily now, politically unacceptable examples in Gilbert’s librettos of jingoistic behaviour, racial stereotyping and the degrading of women and gays.