The least-known Gilbert and Sullivan operetta is also the last one. Premiering on March 7, 1896, ”The Grand Duke” was a swan song for the successful series of 12 Savoy operas that began a quarter-century before with ”Thespis.”
This weekend, Light Opera Works revives ”The Grand Duke” in a production starring Gena Jeffries and Bill Wronski (pictured here).
The company`s artistic director, Philip A. Kraus, is the force behind the staging. A firm believer in the worth of this neglected piece, Kraus calls it ”one honey of an operetta.”
The score, he argues, ranks with the best of the G & S repertory, all the more so if you consider the drastic cuts Gilbert made after opening night
(songs that this revival restores). ”It is late Sullivan, full of adventurous harmonic turns and a bevy of tuneful songs, duets, choruses and three wonderful quintets in a row,” Kraus says.
Among the delights are the obligatory Sullivan madrigal, a Viennese drinking song, a Parisian gambling song, a mad scene, a music-hall melodrama, a ballet and a pseudo-ancient Greek chorus (shades of old ”Thespis”).
Kraus also extols the plot. ”Reducing his dependency on satire and parody, Gilbert wrote a pure farce. It`s less a comedy of manners and more an early example of `theater of the absurd.` The farce dwells on the craziness of the systems and institutions that control the main characters: the eating of a sausage roll to give a conspiratorial sign; a decree that all love episodes take place in a public square; a card game that substitutes for a duel, the loser of which is pronounced legally dead without actually dying. We see a Gilbert who`s ahead of his time, in making farce of the eventual enslavement of the individual by a conformist society.”
Then there are the characters: a hypochondriachal but lovable Grand Duke, a melodramatic English virago stranded in Germany, a simpering soubrette, the ever-present Gilbertian grande-dame contralto, a henpecked theatrical manager and a grandstanding comedian who by the play`s end accumulates four wives!
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”The Grand Duke” runs through Sunday at Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson St., Evanston; 708-869-6300.
