Sir Arthur Sullivan was a gregarious bon vivant who moved in the highest of social circles, and also a composer of "serious" intention. His works included a full length opera and oratorios, and a song cycle to the poems of Tennyson, as well as the hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers." His professional career included nearly two decades as conductor of the Leeds Triennial Music Festival and three years as conductor of the Philharmonic Society of London. But his operettas are why we remember him.
His first two operettas were with a librettist named F. C. Burnand, and the Grove Dictionary describes them as "agreeable diversions on a serious composer's path." But they were the beginnings of his true calling. The first of these two operettas was Cox and Box, based on a play called Box and Cox. And that is our first music on this week's Lyric Stage.
Sergeant Bouncer, an old soldier, has a scheme to get double rent from a single room. By day he lets it to Mr. Box (a printer who is out all night) and by night to Mr. Cox (a hatter who works all day). Whenever either of them asks any awkward questions, Bouncer sings at length about his days in the militia.
But inevitably, Box and Cox discover each other and what is going on. They also find that they are engaged to the same woman, Penelope, who neither one wants to marry. There is confusion about whether she has been lost at sea. If she is lost, then both what her money, which was left to her intended. But she isn’t after all dead, and plans to marry another, a Mr. Knox. Relieved, Cox and Box swear eternal friendship and discover, curiously enough, that they are long-lost brothers. Proof is that neither has a birthmark on their left arm.
Our program concludes with excerpts from Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore.