Naxos
Alfred Cellier: Dorothy (1886). Majella Cullagh (Dorothy Bantam), Lucy Vallis (Lydia Hawthorne), Stephanie Maitland (Phyllis Tuppitt), Matt Mears (Geoffrey Wilder), John Ieuan Jones (Harry Sherwood), Edward Robinson (Sir John Bantam), Patrick Relph (John Tuppitt), Michael Vincent Jones (Lurcher), Sebastian Maclaine (Tom Strutt), Victorian Opera Chorus and Orchestra, c. Richard Bonynge. Naxos 8.660447 [70:52] While Madrid was enjoying the triumph of Chueca’s and Valverde’s La Gran Vía, London had a musical theatre sensation of its own – a native work that challenged in durability the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Dorothy became easily London’s longest-running nineteenth-century musical theatre work, lasting almost three years and 931 performances.
Dorothy’s production was announced for London in 1884 but failed to materialise. Considering that Iolanthe was then current, it’s intriguing to hear verbal and musical echoes of that Gilbert and Sullivan work in Dorothy (tracks 4 and 6). By the time impresario George Edwardes decided to take a chance on Dorothy in 1886, Cellier was in Australia for a conducting engagement he hoped would provide respite from the tuberculosis that was increasingly consuming him. Dorothy was not only accepted for performance, but rehearsed, produced, revised, published and re-cast with its composer on the other side of the world.
Dorothy is an unashamed adaptation of Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, its improbabilities reaching their height in the appearance of the local hunt in the middle of the night to provide a colourful ending to Act 2. As Raymond Walker’s booklet note tells us, critics greeted the music as pretty, graceful and charming. That it most certainly is in such numbers as the soprano’s ‘Be wise in time, O Phyllis mine’ and the waltz-quartet ‘You swear to be good and true’. Both are quoted in the Overture – another number added some time after the première and commendably tracked down for this recording. Naxos offer no dialogue, but a libretto with dialogue is on line. The recording uses what is described as a “performing edition by Richard Bonynge”. Besides minor changes to the words, this means countless cuts from a couple of bars upwards. Considering Bonynge’s reputation as ballet conductor, it’s perhaps disappointing that these particularly affect the ballet music. Under renowned Viennese ballet-mistress Katti Lanner, dance was an important part of the original show – something Gilbert and Sullivan eschewed after their early Thespis. Bonynge’s cuts include the whole of the Act 2 Country Dance, with what is wrongly listed as such (track 16) being just the Act 2 Introduction. These cuts are the more disappointing when what remains shows Cellier’s graceful melodic gift and his considerable skill as orchestrator. An Act 3 chorus is also missing.
If the recording might thus have been better, it remains immensely valuable for letting us finally hear this delightful score. We owe great gratitude to Raymond Walker of Victorian Opera Northwest for giving it to us at all – and at Naxos’s bargain price too. With the recent release of The Mountebanks, it has been a remarkable few months for a composer previously completely in the shade of his good friend and associate Arthur Sullivan. © Andrew Lamb and zarzuela.net, 2019 14/I/2019 |