It’s now most of a theatre-going lifetime since Gilbert and Sullivan’s Savoy operas ceased to be the sole preserve of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company in 1961. These days G&S’s works are programmed by major opera companies. Performed with the right blend of precision and panache, much of Sullivan’s music remains irresistible – unless you can’t stand his mash-up of Donizetti, Offenbach and English ballad-opera. The challenge is to make Gilbert’s late-Victorian topical satire’n’silliness speak to another era.
In this respect, Ruddigore was an odd choice for Charles Court Opera’s third G&S co-production with Opera Holland Park. It takes a lengthy pop at Victorian melodrama (not a theatrical genre that troubles most of us) and trundles slowly – with its professional bridesmaids and identity reveals, ghosts and etiquette-obsessed heroine – towards a sudden legal-loophole resolution in its final moments. Victorian audiences were unconvinced: the piece wasn’t revived in the lifetimes of its authors. Even the OHP programme asks cheerfully: “Is Ruddigore a comedy for chaps?”
