HMS Pinafore enthrals audiences
Gilbert and Sullivan’s latest musical is a storming success on both sides of the pond
At the end of 1877, the composer
Arthur Sullivan was on holiday in France when he had a letter from his chief collaborator, the writer WS Gilbert. The two men had just signed a deal to produce a new light opera for the impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte, and Gilbert had good news. He already had an outline of the new opera’s plot: a love story on a Royal Navy ship, brimming with silliness. “I have very little doubt whatever but that you will be pleased with it,” he assured Sullivan. “There is a good deal of fun in it which I haven’t set down on paper.”
HMS Pinafore opened at London’s Opera Comique on 25 May 1878 and was an immediate sensation, with reports of “eager playgoers pushing and praying for seats or at least for standing room”. The critic of The Era wrote he had rarely “been in the company of a more joyous audience more confidently anticipating an evening’s amusement than that which filled the Opera Comique in every corner”. It was “a hit, a palpable hit”.
In just 18 months, 150 unauthorised productions of HMS Pinafore were put on in the United States, while it played for night after night in London to enthusiastic houses. And it remains a cultural touchstone today: you can find its songs in everything from Star Trek and Raiders of the Lost Ark to Family Guy, The West Wing and even Simpsons.
Dominic Sandbrook co-presents the weekly podcast The Rest Is History with historian Tom Holland, available on all platforms