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This was the third of an ambitious string of recordings by the Lyric
Theater Company of Washington, D.C. (no longer in operation, sadly).
All three — Utopia,
The Mountebanks, and this
Grand Duke — were
recorded with complete dialogue and included every note of the
vocal score. They were originally issued on a private label but enjoyed
fairly wide distribution, judging from the number of people who seem
to have them. Utopia was re-issued by Pearl
Records in the 1970s. This one was not. Nevertheless, it had the
distinction of being the first complete Grand Duke on record.
This recording effectively superseded an earlier and less complete one by the
same group, as Ron Orenstein recounted:
Lyric Theater produced Grand Duke twice, and recorded it both times, The
first recording, which is not in Marc's discography, was released in 1962 on two
discs. I do not have this recording, but from references to it in liner
notes of other Lyric Theater recordings I gather the orchestration was not
Sullivan's and there were some modifications (e.g., as I recall, Ernest, Rudolph
and the Notary sang the "private plot" trio from Utopia in Act II).
[Peter Kline, Lyric's director, suggested interpolating the "private plot" trio
into The Grand Duke in his book, Gilbert and Sullivan Production. —ed.]
This may be without dialogue; the 1965 recording, on 3 discs, has full dialogue.
John Pepper, who played the Herald, provided this background story of how the recording was made:
During my adolescence, in the years 1959-1965 but mostly in the second half
of that stretch, I was involved in various ways with the Lyric Theater
Company ("Lyric" to its personal friends), and so I read with great interest
what you and others have written about it.
For The Grand Duke, we used the original
orchestration, hiring the parts from D'Oyly Carte, but since the Prince of
Monte Carlo's
Roulette song was missing therefrom, John himself orchestrated that — I
copied some of the parts. It's a very effective number, IMO — goes with a
somewhat raffish French opera swing, sounding like Gounod with a soupçon of
Offenbach — and it's in my favourite key, D flat major! Evidently Sullivan,
a roulette devotee, had no trouble getting into the text.
John Landis was passionate & acquisitive about Sullivan's music. It irritated him
that there existed no conductor's full score of the operas — what he got
from DOC was a hand-annotated vocal score. So while he had the parts of
The Grand Duke in his possession (Utopia & Mountebanks too, I suppose)
he burned much midnight oil copying them in pencil on to score paper, to be
inked in later — a great secret, at least from DOC. He used this score in
performance, and of course retained it afterwards, while the parts (one of
only 2 sets, as he understood it) went back under lock and key at the Savoy
Hotel.
Mind you, the annotated GD vocal score was not without interest, e.g.,
there was a hand-written, interpolated "No. 2a," anticipating the
"Opoponax, Eloia" music in Act II (apparently by way of illustrating
Ludwig's description of his imaginary wedding-procession); it included
indications of instrumentation and was written very neatly in red ink, with a
fountain pen, in a hand that looked a lot like Sullivan's. Similarly, for
Ludwig's dialogue with the Baroness in Act II there was a hand-written
indication of how the chorus interpolation "For any disappointment" would
work, since that was left out of the printed score.
The recording is not in my personal collection, but J. Donald Smith provided this review:
This mono recording of the "complete" Grand Duke
is the "First Night" version. Like many other records
of that period, it was recorded at a low gain, and with a weak pressing
it is difficult to hear the loud passages as loud.
This version has different strengths and weaknesses than does the
Mount Oread Grand Duke. The
enunciation is not as good and the chorus is somewhat muddy. There
is a full orchestra (but still amateur). The Rudolph has an excellent
singing voice, but his speaking voice is so strong that one has trouble
visualizing him as a "broken-down critter." In fact, the major criticism
of this performance is the general weakness in dramatic characterization
in the dialogue.
This is a performance that I would not listen to frequently unless I
wanted to hear the dialogue. For a performance with dialogue, there is
little choice between this version and that of the
Mount Oread group. Each has its strengths and
weaknesses, and the choice would appear to depend on which recording one
might be able to find.
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