Gilbert and Sullivan: Utopia, Limited; King Arthur—Suite from the Incidental Music. Soloists; Chorus of Utopia, Limited; and The Orchestra of Scottish Opera conducted by Derek Clark. Opus Arte. $31.99 (2 CDs).
The penultimate Gilbert and Sullivan operetta is arguably the most English of them all, and for that very reason is difficult for non-British audiences to follow. The very title can confuse Americans, since it does not mean “Utopia, constrained” but “Utopia, Inc.,” the British “Limited” (Ltd.) being the equivalent of the American “Incorporated” (Inc.). Beyond that, the entirety of the work is a complex, indeed somewhat over-complex, interweaving of satires of very specific English/British matters and customs – not only the creation and meaning of corporations but also prudish traditions, forms of conversation, “government by party,” the War Office, the Admiralty, the Lord Chamberlain’s office, the County Council, and more. As barbed as some of the satire is, it goes above the heads, or flies below the radar, of audiences not thoroughly versed in the system that Gilbert pricked and poked to, it must be said, somewhat too great a degree. Unlike the prior operetta, The Gondoliers, to which Utopia, Limited bears numerous superficial similarities – from a setting on a distant South Sea island to critiques of the abuse of limited-liability-company creation and management – Utopia, Limited is so crammed with commentary that its plot can be hard to follow on both sides of the pond.
The work is chock-full of dramatis personae, too: its subtitle, The Flowers of Progress, refers to no fewer than six representatives of British customs and approaches, who together remake the formerly quiet and peaceful island of the title. Why six? The rules for establishing a limited-liability company require that “some seven men form an association,” so the six are added to King Paramount of Utopia to transform the king’s land into a thoroughly British one. Then there are the king’s three daughters, their imported British chaperone and tutor, and the rather peculiar triumvirate of “bad guys” in the form of two venal “wise men” who control the king and a “royal exploder” who will blow him up and assume the throne if he fails to toe the line.
It is all a bit much, and it was a bit much for Gilbert, who did not quite tie up a variety of Act I loose ends by the end of Act II. Add to that a touch of modern-day Scottish Opera prissiness in the name of political correctness – which involves changing some supposedly “offensive” Gilbert words while inexplicably leaving “worse” matters entirely alone – and you have what you would be justified in expecting to be a recipe for a less-than-enjoyable recording.
Yet it all works, and indeed works wondrously well. Not perfectly well – the Scottish Opera emendations would have provided considerable fodder for Gilbert, a master of giving short shrift to pretentious, self-important nonsense. But the libretto’s top-heaviness is more than overcome by the many, many excellences of Sullivan’s music: several events in Act II occur entirely wordlessly and to very fine effect, and the unaccompanied chorus Eagle High on Cloudland Soaring is a top-notch exploration of Sullivan’s late, and rather serious, style. Not that Sullivan’s skill in lighter music is missing: the aria A Tenor, All Singers Above is hilarious, and the Act II celebration of the now-accomplished “Englishness” of Utopia – sung by the king and the six Flowers of Progress, all wielding tambourines – is simply marvelous on all levels except, maybe, one.
About that “one”: the stage directions require the members of the septet to “range their chairs across stage like Christy Minstrels,” referring to the extremely popular, now-notorious blackface musical troupe founded by Edwin Pearce Christy in 1843. Aha! Surely the implicit racism underlying this number is what troubles Scottish Opera? Well, no. That issue is ignored; and since this release includes no libretto (not even a link to one) and Scottish Opera records only the music, the idea may be to avoid acknowledging that particular circumstance entirely. Not so elsewhere, however: conductor Derek Clark explains that some of Gilbert’s words in the finale of Act I have been rewritten because they “seem derogatory.” And what might those words be? Be sure to skitter to your safe space if your delicate ears and refined sensibility cannot handle them! One terrifying half line has the Utopians worried that they might seem to be “little better than half-clothed barbarians!” Oh no! That has to be changed to a worry that they might be “sadly lacking as good humanitarians.” And elsewhere the Utopians ask the Flowers of Progress “how to work off their social and political arrears.” Oh horrible, horrible, most horrible! It must be altered to a request to pour advice “in our attentive ears.”
Expert as he was at skewering the self-important, pricking their pretentiousness and pomposity, Gilbert would surely have incorporated suitable barbs about these ridiculous alterations into a libretto that could be called Scottish Opera, Needlessly Limited. The manifest peculiarities of the changes are all the more evident because the opera company has no trouble leaving in such characterizations as “simple Gauls” and “foreign-born rapscallions.” Not to mention “poppydom,” a very definite drug reference. Maybe contemporary censors don’t know those words?
Well, be all this as it may, the musical matters here are so good that they make the two-CD Opus Arte release a pleasure to hear so long as one does not listen too closely to the verbiage at inopportune moments. But by all means do listen to some of Gilbert’s topical references and “in-jokes.” As he did with the telephone in HMS Pinafore, he refers to a new technology here: the Kodak camera, whose slogan (“You press the button, we do the rest”) he appropriates at just the right time. And speaking of that earlier nautical opera, one of the Flowers of Progress is none other than Captain Corcoran, clearly fully recovered from his demotion in the earlier work and now identified as “Captain Sir Edward Corcoran, K.C.B., of the Royal Navy” – and quite willing to reprise, to excellent effect and in a new context, the famous lyrics: “What, never? Well, hardly ever.”
Utopia, Limited is a flawed work in many ways, but not the verbal ones that bother Scottish Opera. Totally Anglocentric, it does not travel well outside Great Britain, and its overlapping and imperfectly resolved plot elements make it harder to follow and less appealing from a storytelling perspective than other Gilbert and Sullivan works. But there is a great deal of marvelous music in it, and Scottish Opera, when it avoids overthinking itself into a corner and lets the music develop and flow, does a superb job with the presentation. This work is unlikely ever to curry as much favor as earlier Gilbert and Sullivan entertainments, but it has so much to recommend it – almost in spite of its own intricacy – that it is very much worth hearing and re-hearing, perhaps especially for audiences who know Gilbert and Sullivan only from The Mikado. Come to think of it, what would Scottish Opera do with that piece of what would now be called cultural appropriation? Quick, to the safe room!
Oh – while hunkered down therein, feel free to listen to the bonus elements of this recording: five choruses that Sullivan wrote even later than Utopia, Limited, for the 1895 stage play King Arthur by J. R. Comyns Carr. Sullivan reused some of his earlier music for the play’s introductions and entr’actes, but he created five significant and serious pieces of choral music for use at various times during the play. They are all sung by Scottish Opera’s chorus with strength and forcefulness befitting the seriousness of Carr’s drama – although it is actually the fourth and lightest chorus, The May Song, that is most appealing by virtue of being less heavy-handed and insistent than the others. Taken together with Utopia, Limited, which dates to 1893, the rarely heard King Arthur choruses provide a clear and welcome portrait of Sullivan’s musical accomplishments during his final decade of life. Except for its self-inflicted wounds, this recording is an exceptionally fine one that is well worth repeated hearings for the sake of gaining familiarity with some worthy and still largely neglected works.
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