D'Oyly Carte Opera Company

The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is a professional British light opera company which, from the 1870s until 1982, staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere. The company was revived for short seasons and tours from 1988 to 2003, and since 2013 it has co-produced four of the operas with Scottish Opera.

In 1875 Richard D'Oyly Carte asked the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan to collaborate on a short comic opera to round out an evening's entertainment. When that work, Trial by Jury, became a success, Carte put together a syndicate to produce a full-length Gilbert and Sullivan work, The Sorcerer (1877), followed by H.M.S. Pinafore (1878). After Pinafore became an international sensation, Carte jettisoned his difficult investors and formed a new partnership with Gilbert and Sullivan that became the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. The company produced the succeeding ten Gilbert and Sullivan operas and many other operas and companion pieces, mostly at the Savoy Theatre in London, which Carte built in 1881 for that purpose. The company also mounted tours in Britain, New York and elsewhere, usually running several companies simultaneously. Carte's able assistant, Helen Lenoir, became his wife in 1888 and, after his death in 1901, she ran the company until her own death in 1913. By this time, it had become a year-round Gilbert and Sullivan touring repertory company.

Carte's son Rupert inherited the company. Beginning in 1919, he mounted new seasons in London with new set and costume designs, while continuing the year-round tours in Britain and abroad. With the help of the director J. M. Gordon and the conductor Isidore Godfrey, Carte ran the company for 35 years. He redesigned the Savoy Theatre in 1928 and sponsored a series of recordings over the years that helped to keep the operas popular. After Rupert's death in 1948, his daughter Bridget inherited the company and hired Frederic Lloyd as general manager. The company continued to tour for 35 weeks each year, issue new recordings and play London seasons of Gilbert and Sullivan. In 1961 the last copyright on the Gilbert and Sullivan operas expired, and Bridget set up and endowed a charitable trust that presented the operas until mounting costs and a lack of public funding forced the closure of the company in 1982. It re-formed in 1988 with a legacy left by Bridget D'Oyly Carte, played short tours and London seasons, and issued some popular recordings. Denied significant funding from the English Arts Council, it suspended productions in 2003. With Scottish Opera, it co-produced The Pirates of Penzance in 2013, The Mikado in 2016 and The Gondoliers and Utopia, Limited in 2021–22.

Some of the company's performers, over the decades, became stars of their day and often moved on to careers in musical theatre or grand opera. The company licensed the operas for performance in Australasia and to numerous amateur troupes in Britain and elsewhere, providing orchestra parts and prompt books for hire. The company kept the Savoy operas in the public eye for over a century and left an enduring legacy of production styles and stage business that continue to be emulated in new productions, as well as recordings.

Birth and Death Data: Born Founded 1875

Date Range of DAHR Recordings: 1917 - 1930

Roles Represented in DAHR: Vocal group, Musical group

= Recordings are available for online listening.
= Recordings were issued from this master. No recordings issued from other masters.

Recordings (Results 26-50 of 85 records)

Company Matrix No. Size First Recording Date Title Primary Performer Description Role Audio
Gramophone HO2792af 12-in. 8/2/1917 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company Operetta : Vocal soloist(s), and/or chorus/orchestra Vocal group  
Gramophone HO2798af 12-in. 8/2/1917 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company Operetta : Vocal soloist(s), and/or chorus/orchestra Vocal group  
Gramophone HO2800af 12-in. 8/2/1917 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Robert Radford Operetta : Vocal soloist(s), and/or chorus/orchestra Vocal group  
Gramophone HO2802af 12-in. 8/2/1917 The Mikado George Baker ; D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Robert Radford ; Edna Thornton Operetta : Vocal soloist(s), and/or chorus/orchestra Vocal group  
Gramophone HO2803af 12-in. 8/2/1917 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company Operetta : Vocal soloist(s), and/or chorus/orchestra Vocal group  
Gramophone HO2806af 12-in. 8/2/1917 The Mikado George Baker ; D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Edna Thornton Operetta : Vocal soloist(s), and/or chorus/orchestra Vocal group  
Gramophone HO2807af 12-in. 8/2/1917 The Mikado George Baker ; D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Violet Essex ; John Harrison ; Robert Radford Operetta : Vocal soloist(s), and/or chorus/orchestra Vocal group  
Gramophone HO2809af 12-in. 8/2/1917 The Mikado George Baker ; D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; John Harrison ; Robert Radford Operetta : Vocal soloist(s), and/or chorus/orchestra Vocal group  
Gramophone HO2812af 12-in. 8/3/1917 The Mikado George Baker ; D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Robert Radford Operetta : Vocal soloist(s), and/or chorus/orchestra Vocal group  
Gramophone HO2814af 12-in. 8/15/1917 The Mikado George Baker ; D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Ernest Pike ; Robert Radford Operetta : Vocal soloist(s), and/or chorus/orchestra Vocal group  
Gramophone HO2815af 12-in. 8/3/1917 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Arthur Wood Operetta : Vocal soloist(s), and/or chorus/orchestra Vocal group, Musical group  
Gramophone HO2817af 12-in. 8/15/1917 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Arthur Wood Operetta : Vocal soloist(s), and/or chorus/orchestra Vocal group, Musical group  
Gramophone HO2915af 12-in. 10/16/1917 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Bessie Jones ; Ernest Pike ; Robert Radford ; Edna Thornton Operetta : Vocal soloist(s), and/or chorus/orchestra Vocal group  
Gramophone Cc9408 12-in. 11/8/1926 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Harry Norris Orchestra Musical group, Vocal group  
Gramophone Cc9409 12-in. 11/8/1926 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Harry Norris Orchestra Musical group, Vocal group  
Gramophone Cc9410 12-in. 11/8/1926 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Harry Norris ; Derek Oldham Male vocal chorus and soloist, with orchestra Musical group, Vocal group  
Gramophone Cc9462 12-in. 11/19/1926 The Mikado George Baker ; D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Harry Norris Male vocal chorus and soloist, with orchestra Musical group, Vocal group  
Gramophone Cc9463 12-in. 11/19/1926 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Darrell Fancourt ; Harry Norris Male vocal chorus and soloist, with orchestra Musical group, Vocal group  
Gramophone Cc9464 12-in. 11/19/1926 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Aileen Davies ; Darrell Fancourt ; Elsie Griffin ; Bertha Lewis ; Henry A. Lytton ; Harry Norris ; Derek Oldham Mixed vocal chorus and soloists, with orchestra Musical group, Vocal group  
Gramophone Cc9465 12-in. 11/19/1926 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Bertha Lewis ; Henry A. Lytton ; Harry Norris Vocal solos, with orchestra Musical group, Vocal group  
Gramophone Cc9466 12-in. 11/19/1926 The Mikado George Baker ; D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Henry A. Lytton ; Harry Norris ; Leo Sheffield Male vocal trio, with orchestra Musical group, Vocal group  
Gramophone Cc9467 12-in. 11/19/1926 The Mikado George Baker ; D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Harry Norris ; Derek Oldham ; Leo Sheffield Male vocal trio and duet, with orchestra Musical group, Vocal group  
Gramophone Cc9468 12-in. 11/19/1926 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Aileen Davies ; Beatrice Elburn ; Elsie Griffin ; Harry Norris ; Derek Oldham ; Leo Sheffield Mixed vocal chorus and soloists, with orchestra Musical group, Vocal group  
Gramophone Cc9469 12-in. 11/19/1926 The Mikado George Baker ; D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Elsie Griffin ; Doris Hemingway ; Harry Norris ; Derek Oldham Mixed vocal quartet, with orchestra Musical group, Vocal group  
Gramophone Cc9470 12-in. 11/22/1926 The Mikado D'Oyly Carte Opera Company ; Elsie Griffin ; Harry Norris ; Derek Oldham Female vocal solo, with orchestra Musical group, Vocal group  
(Results 26-50 of 85 records)

Citation

Discography of American Historical Recordings, s.v. "D'Oyly Carte Opera Company," accessed April 25, 2024, https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/names/100059.

D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. (2024). In Discography of American Historical Recordings. Retrieved April 25, 2024, from https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/names/100059.

"D'Oyly Carte Opera Company." Discography of American Historical Recordings. UC Santa Barbara Library, 2024. Web. 25 April 2024.

DAHR Persistent Identifier

URI: https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/names/100059

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