A QUESTIONNAIRE ON GILBERT & SULLIVAN

ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT

1. Which of the operas have sub-titles and what arc they?

2. What rowdy American college song stole its tune from a Sullivan chorus?

3. Who played Major General Stanley in the first English performance of The Pirates of Penzance?

, 4. What superstition affected the naming of the operas?

5. Which of them was banned for a time by the Lord Chamberlain?

6. What world-famous hotel was built out of the profits from the original productions?

7. What notable actress of the American theatre once sang Ralph Rackstraw in Pinafore for a hundred performances?

8. Name two celebrated Sullivan melodics composed for other fields.

9. What lines of Gilbert's arc cut in the pedestal of the Sullivan memorial in the Embankment Gardens and from what libretto are they quoted?

10. What is the legend on the Gilbert memorial on the Embankment wall and who wrote it?

1 1. Wrhat celebrated prima donna of yesterday made her stage debut through one of the many productions given in this country by church choirs during the first Pinafore epidemic?

12. When and how did Gilbert die?

1 3. Which of the operas had the longest run when it was new in London f

14. At which opera's New York premiere did Sullivan conduct the orchestra?

15. Which of the libretti was a travesty on a celebrated poem?

16. What song was addressed and sung to a London celebrity who attended its first rendition at the Savoy?

17. Which of the libretti was a revision of one written by Gilbert in an earlier collaboration?

18. Which song, intended as a satire on English complacency, was resented by the French?

19. Which is the longest song in the operas?

20. What celebrated American beauty sang thetitle role of Patience during its first season in New York?

(Answers Will Be Pound on Page 110)

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONNAIRE ON PAGE 63

1. Thespis: or The Gods Grown Old Pinafore: or The Lass That Loved a Sailor The Pirates of Penzance: or The Slave of Duty Patience: or Bunthorne's Bride

Princess Ida: or Castle Adamant The Mikado: or The Town of Titipu lolanthe: or The Peer and the Peri Ruddigore: or The Witch's Curse

The Yeoman of the Guard: or The Merry man and his Maid Utopia, Ltd.: or The Flowers of Progress The Gondoliers: or The King of Barataria.

2. "Hail, Hail, the gang's all here" took its tune from a chorus in the second act of The Pirates of Penzance. 3. Richard Mansfield. 4. A tendency to regard the letter P as a talisman: lolanthe \\'as almost called Perola. 5. The Mikado, forbidden in 1907 out of the Foreign Office's nervousness about the Japanese entente. 6. The Savoy in London. 7. Minnie Maddern Fiske. 8. The Lost Chord and Onward, Christian Soldiers.

9. "Is life a boon?

If so, it must befall

That Death, whene'er he call,

Must call too soon"—The Yeoman of the Guard.

10. "His foe was folly and his weapon Avit"—proposed by Anthony Hope Hawkins. 11. Jessie Bartlett Davis. 12. He Avas drowned in 1911. 13. The Mikado. 14. The Pirates of Penzance. 15. Princess Ida, a travesty on Tennyson's The Princess. 16. The second refrain of the fairy queen's song in lolanthe, addressed to Captain Shaw, chief of the London fire department. 17. Princess Ida. 18. The Darned Mounseer from Ruddigore. 19. The Lord Chancellor's second act solo in lolanthe. 20. Lillian Russell.