Victorian Music and Culture: A Reflection

This semester has been a wonderful exploration of the music and culture of Victorian England.  Although we still have several weeks to go, I felt as if a reflection was in order for this, my final blog.  As one can tell immediately from viewing my blog in this class, my primary focus during this era are the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.  As a specialist in this field, it has been wonderful to really explore a variety of areas both directly and indirectly connected to these works.  The other subjects covered, such as the music hall, the opera house box, various gender concerns, other composers of the time; these all help me contextualize my work with the Savoy Operas, and I hope open my eyes to the full environment in which these works were created. 

I have enjoyed sharing my G&S expertise with my classmates, and look forward to next week’s discussions of Princess Ida. I have had a little experience with the show, having twice performed it for fun with a group called The Sunday Afternoon Gilbert and Sullivan Society, singing Cyril both times.  I was a finalist in the fall 2007 auditions for NYGASP’s production of Princess Ida, one of four tenors seriously considered for the role of Cyril, out of 35 who auditioned.  Finally, there was a ‘pot-luck’ Princess Ida one night at the Festival Club in Buxton last summer.  They had a Cyril, but were lacking a Hilarion.  I spent 1 hour learning as much of the role as I could, and sight-read the show.  It was a crash-course in the other principal tenor, but then again, very few of the Savoy Operas give you the chance to have two lead tenor parts.

Princess Ida has a lot to say, and can cause varying degrees of controversy.  In an earlier conversation with one of my classmates, there was a degree of anger expressed at the way in which Princess Ida is presented in the Youtube clips posted for our class.  However, when I explained my own take on the topics of controversy, my classmate said that that was nothing like what they got out of the videos.  It will be an interesting discussion next week, and I hope to add to the debate by presenting the thoughts of Dr. Carolyn Williams, whose new book, Gilbert and Sullivan: Gender, Genre and Parody I just received directly from the author.  I will be reading the chapter on Princess Ida this weekend.

This kind of lively debate / discussion is what has made this class so interesting and enjoyable throughout the semester.  It will be be a shame to see it all go in a few weeks.