W. S. Gilbert Bücher

Gilbert's verses for Sullivan's music are the most fastidiously turned and inventively rhymed in all lyric comedy. As the Savoy Operas enter their second century on a swell of renewed popularity, Gilbert's reputation as the supreme wordsmith of light opera remains secure.Complete and authentic, these are the librettos on which modern performances and recordings are based. Scattered among the songs are over seventy of the amusing, quirky pictures Gilbert drew to illustrate them. A chronology prepared for this edition sketches the authors' lives and careers. This is a book that no lover of Gilbert and Sullivan, musical comedy, or indeed the English theater will want to be without.

Gilbert and Sullivan's operas are some of the world's best-loved musical works, delighting audiences with their joyous wit, topsy-turvy logic and extravagant wordplay. This glorious treasury is the definitive annotated edition of all fourteen of their operas. From the partially lost work "Thespis", the first collaboration between W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, through the triumphant comic romps "The Pirates of Penzance" and "The Mikado", to lesser-performed gems such as the fanciful "The Sorcerer" and the acerbic lampoon "Patience", Gilbert's libretti are collected here in their most accurate and faithful form. There is a fascinating commentary on each work, telling the extraordinary stories behind the inspiration for the opera and its performance history, and giving plot summaries and original cast lists. Also containing original illustrations from Gilbert's "Bab Ballads", as well as extensive notes for every work, this ultimate Gilbert and Sullivan collection will delight all devotees of the incomparable duo.

This is a unique edition of four "high society" Victorian comedies, currently enjoying revival on the London stage. The volume Dion Boucicault's London Assurance, W. S. Gilbert's Engaged, Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Money, and Henry James's The High Bid. Each of the plays deals with marriage, tests of affection, and the power of money.A critical introduction, a wide-ranging annotation, and an informative bibliography illuminate the plays' cultural contexts and theatrical potential for reader and performer alike.