(Today, it is the Palace Theatre, a popular London venue for musicals.) Sullivan patched up his quarrel with Gilbert, and the pair produced two more works, neither of which recaptured their old popularity. Ivanhoe ran for 155 performances – the longest unbroken run of a serious opera – but it lost money, and the theatre closed almost a year later. When the monarch herself requested Sullivan compose an opera of Ivanhoe, he had no choice but to yield in Queen Victoria’s name.ĭ’Oyly Carte built a new home for English grand opera, the Royal English Opera House, which Sullivan’s work inaugurated. That vein of comic opera seemed to have dried up for good now was the time for Sullivan to prove his mettle with a serious work, as his admirers and his critics had wished him to do for years. After Gilbert took his former partner and the impresario D’Oyly Carte to court, librettist and composer were on bad terms. Illustrated London News, 7th February 1891īy 1891, Gilbert and Sullivan had written twelve Savoy Operas – including the more serious historical work, The Yeomen of the Guard (1891) – but their partnership had foundered on the rocks of the Carpet Quarrel. Since the mid-1880s, David Lyle notes, he had wanted to write a “historical work” with music that spoke “to the heart, and not to the head”, and a plot that “ rise to human emotions and human passions”. Even a sympathetic Christian like Ivanhoe recoils when he discovers that the beautiful, gentle woman who has nursed his wounds is Jewish.Īs a truly English work, Sir Arthur Sullivan considered Ivanhoe the ideal subject for his first and only grand opera. “Far less cruel are the cruelties of the Moors unto the race of Jacob than the cruelties of the Nazarenes of England,” Rebecca reflects. In many ways, the Jews are wiser and more peaceful than the Christians, who spend their time persecuting Jews for their riches and trying to burn them for witchcraft.

But the true heroine is the Jewess Rebecca, whom Scott modelled on the American philanthropist and educator, Rebecca Gratz. Ivanhoe returns incognito and helps to restore Richard the Lion-heart to the throne. Ivanhoe is the son of the Saxon thane, Cedric of Rotherwood his father has disowned him because he fell in love with Cedric’s ward, Rowena, who is of royal blood, and whom her guardian wishes to marry Athelstane, claimant to the English throne. The magnificent, sprawling 1819 novel gave the 19 th century many of its romantic notions of mediaeval England: good King Richard and bad Prince John Norman tyranny and suffering Saxons Robin Hood and Friar Tuck damsels in distress and knights in shining armour. One might well call Ivanhoe a “respectful operatic perversion” of Scott. Margaret Macintyre and Charlotte Thudichum LUCAS DE BEAUMANOIR, Grand Master of the Templars SIR BRIAN DE BOIS GUILBERT, Commander of the Knights TemplarĮugène Oudin, François Noije, Richard Green First performed: Royal English Opera House, London, 31 st January 1891.Libretto: Julian Sturgis, after Sir Walter Scott.

Shaw carpet style scribe