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No Cards
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No Cards
No Cards is a "musical piece in one act" for four characters, written by W. S. Gilbert, with music composed and arranged by Thomas German Reed. It was first produced at the Royal Gallery of Illustration, Lower Regent Street, London, under the management of German Reed, opening on 29 March 1869 and closing on 21 November 1869. The work is a domestic farce of mistaken identities and inept disguises, as two men desperately compete to marry a wealthy young lady. One is young and poor, and the other is a rich miser. Each disguises himself as her guardian.
No Cards was the first of Gilbert's six pieces for the Gallery of Illustration. It was also Gilbert's first libretto with prose dialogue and the first stage work for which he wrote lyrics to be set to music, rather than lyrics to pre-existing music. No Cards was played on a double bill with Arthur Sullivan and F. C. Burnand's Cox and Box, although Gilbert and Sullivan did not meet until later that year. After a successful 139 performances in London, the bill toured the British provinces. Gilbert liked German Reed's setting of the Babbetyboobledore song enough to reuse it later in 1869 in his next show, The Pretty Druidess.
Music publisher Joseph Williams & Co. reissued "No Cards" in 1895 with a score by "Lionel Elliott", which appears to be a pseudonym. A production mounted at St. George's Hall in London in 1873 appears to have been the first to use this "Elliott" score, and a revival took place at St. George's Hall in 1902. The Royal Victorian Opera Company of Boston, Massachusetts made a video of the piece in 1996 using the Elliott score. The first British revival in over a century was produced by the Centenary Company at the Greenwich Theatre from 18 to 21 November 2009 (as a curtain raiser to The Pirates of Penzance) using Elliott's score retrieved from the British Library.
At the time that W. S. Gilbert began writing plays:
The stage was at a low ebb, Elizabethan glories and Georgian artificialities had alike faded into the past, stilted tragedy and vulgar farce were all the would-be playgoer had to choose from, and the theatre had become a place of evil repute to the righteous British householder.
Oratorio was then at the height of its vogue, and Shakespearean drama as interpreted by the Kean, Macready, and Kendal school still held its public; but at the other extreme there were only farces or the transplanted operettas of Offenbach, Lecocq and other French composers, which were as a rule very indifferently rendered, and their librettos so badly translated that any wit or point the dialogue might have possessed was entirely lost.
To fill this gap, Thomas German Reed opened his German Reed Entertainments at the Gallery of Illustration. Seeing the quality of Gilbert's early burlesques, he engaged Gilbert to write a series of six one-act operettas. The Gallery of Illustration was a 500-seat theatre with a small stage that only allowed for four or five characters with accompaniment by a piano, harmonium and sometimes a harp.
Gilbert's libretto, his first with lyrics written to be set by a composer, instead of written to existing melodies, gives hints of some elements of his later works. For instance, the "uncivilised" island of Babbetyboobledore is an early look at a Gilbertian utopia, such as in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Utopia, Limited, written 25 years later. Compare these lyrics from No Cards:
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No Cards
No Cards is a "musical piece in one act" for four characters, written by W. S. Gilbert, with music composed and arranged by Thomas German Reed. It was first produced at the Royal Gallery of Illustration, Lower Regent Street, London, under the management of German Reed, opening on 29 March 1869 and closing on 21 November 1869. The work is a domestic farce of mistaken identities and inept disguises, as two men desperately compete to marry a wealthy young lady. One is young and poor, and the other is a rich miser. Each disguises himself as her guardian.
No Cards was the first of Gilbert's six pieces for the Gallery of Illustration. It was also Gilbert's first libretto with prose dialogue and the first stage work for which he wrote lyrics to be set to music, rather than lyrics to pre-existing music. No Cards was played on a double bill with Arthur Sullivan and F. C. Burnand's Cox and Box, although Gilbert and Sullivan did not meet until later that year. After a successful 139 performances in London, the bill toured the British provinces. Gilbert liked German Reed's setting of the Babbetyboobledore song enough to reuse it later in 1869 in his next show, The Pretty Druidess.
Music publisher Joseph Williams & Co. reissued "No Cards" in 1895 with a score by "Lionel Elliott", which appears to be a pseudonym. A production mounted at St. George's Hall in London in 1873 appears to have been the first to use this "Elliott" score, and a revival took place at St. George's Hall in 1902. The Royal Victorian Opera Company of Boston, Massachusetts made a video of the piece in 1996 using the Elliott score. The first British revival in over a century was produced by the Centenary Company at the Greenwich Theatre from 18 to 21 November 2009 (as a curtain raiser to The Pirates of Penzance) using Elliott's score retrieved from the British Library.
At the time that W. S. Gilbert began writing plays:
The stage was at a low ebb, Elizabethan glories and Georgian artificialities had alike faded into the past, stilted tragedy and vulgar farce were all the would-be playgoer had to choose from, and the theatre had become a place of evil repute to the righteous British householder.
Oratorio was then at the height of its vogue, and Shakespearean drama as interpreted by the Kean, Macready, and Kendal school still held its public; but at the other extreme there were only farces or the transplanted operettas of Offenbach, Lecocq and other French composers, which were as a rule very indifferently rendered, and their librettos so badly translated that any wit or point the dialogue might have possessed was entirely lost.
To fill this gap, Thomas German Reed opened his German Reed Entertainments at the Gallery of Illustration. Seeing the quality of Gilbert's early burlesques, he engaged Gilbert to write a series of six one-act operettas. The Gallery of Illustration was a 500-seat theatre with a small stage that only allowed for four or five characters with accompaniment by a piano, harmonium and sometimes a harp.
Gilbert's libretto, his first with lyrics written to be set by a composer, instead of written to existing melodies, gives hints of some elements of his later works. For instance, the "uncivilised" island of Babbetyboobledore is an early look at a Gilbertian utopia, such as in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Utopia, Limited, written 25 years later. Compare these lyrics from No Cards:
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