Gilbert and sullivan

Never let it be said that The Spectator fails to follow up an arts story. Long-term readers will recall that in the edition of 6 March 1711 Joseph Addison investigated the supply of live sparrows for the first production of Handel’s Rinaldo. ‘What, are they to be roasted?’ he asked, reasonably enough. No, they were ‘to enter towards the end of the first Act and to fly about the Stage’. Still, you need to keep an eye on these theatrical types and although there was certainly birdsong in the latest revival of Rinaldo – the end-of-term opera at the Royal Academy of Music – I can report it was recorded.

Utopia, Limited (1893) is a rare bird, and one that every Gilbert and Sullivan completist simply has to bag. The point of completism, of course, is to acquire an overview: if artists are truly original, everything they created should illuminate the whole. But what if a career tailed off, or ran to seed? It’s just going to be depressing, isn’t it? By the time they began their penultimate opera, Gilbert and Sullivan hadn’t collaborated for three years. In fact, they’d barely spoken. Goaded back into harness, they produced a comedy that really ought to have sparkled and yet somehow… well, put it this way: even the late D’Oyly Carte company