Gilbert and Sullivan: A Dual Biography [Hardcover]

In the preface of this dual biography of Gilbert and Sullivan, Michael Ainger draws attention to the previous book dealing with the same topic, Leslie Baily's "The Gilbert and Sullivan Book." Ainger points out that in the half century that has passed since the publication of Baily's book, great collections of Gilbert-and-Sullivaniana have become available in Britain and America, and that he has been able to incorporate their contents into this book.

In the past few days I have read both books for comparison (which makes this my third time through with Baily, not much when spread over fifty years.) There can be no doubt that Mr. Ainger crams more facts into his closely set and rather gray-looking 504 pages than Baily put in his typographically more generous and colorful 475.

Here is an example: Baily reproduces a newspaper engraving in which Gilbert and Sullivan are present in a courtroom as they attempt to defend their ownership of "H.M.S. Pinafore" against the claims of some disgruntled former financial backers. Standing in the dock and testifying is the great actor-manager, Sir Henry Irving--employer of novelist Bram Stoker and model for his Count Dracula. Baily does not explain what the greatest Hamlet of the Nineteenth Century had to do with "H.M.S. Pinafore." Ainger has no room for the old drawing but he does explain what Irving was saying. (It had to do with the technical meaning of the word, "run," when applied to theatrical productions. Now you know.)

Or consider this: Baily often refers to the lovely, wealthy, cultivated, married American lady--irrevocably separated from her husband--with whom Sullivan had a long and intimate liaison. Ainger peers into the diaries that Sullivan kept under lock and key to speculate on whether the symbols used referred to his sexual activities with her.

After reading both books together, I find myself with the impression that Ainger set out to fill in all the gaps in Baily's narrative. To a great extent, he has succeeded in doing just that. But I am not convinced that the result was worth all of his effort. From Baily's book as well as from practically everybody in the past century who has written about him, it is clear that W. S. Gilbert was often thin-skinned, irascible and pugnacious. That fact may be taken as given. I, for one, have little interest in the details of his petty quarrels, and especially not in those that never impinged on the creation or production of the Savoy operas.

Ainger has written a serious and dense book for dedicated fans of Gilbert and Sullivan. He does not write of the operas, themselves, but of their texts and development--quite different things. Ainger is scholarly and he expects much from his readers. Unless you are pretty close to the stage at which you are able to quote long passages of G&S without written aid, you are going to find Ainger's accounts of dialogue changes fairly heavy going.

Baily was a better writer than Ainger. He had a clear grasp of his audience (after all, he published four popular editions in just four years.) It consisted of people who enjoyed the works of G&S and had some familiarity with them: fans, not experts. Above all, he knew that he was writing the epic tale of the rise and fall of a great partnership.

For a reader who feels some interest in G&S and who desires only a single good book about them, Baily's book is, hands down, the best choice. The reader with deeper interest should acquire both, Baily for narrative and overall architecture of the tale, Ainger for nitty-gritty detail. For the hopelessly addicted fanatic who inflicts stunned guests with detailed comparisons of the electronic recordings of the 1920s, the mono recordings of the 1950s and the stereo recordings of the 1960s, who wonders why the pre-1920 acoustic recordings haven't yet appeared on CD, get both and add to them Wren's "A Most Ingenious Paradox." While both Ainger and Baily are basically sound, Wren's book abounds in wrong-headed analyses and fatuous conclusions, but his factual underpinning is reliable enough. Demolishing Wren's arguments is an excellent way for exercising your wits and the pleasure he affords when you exasperatedly throw his book across the room is both great and easily renewable.

Since my early childhood in the 1940s, I have known the basic stories of how Sullivan and Gilbert died; and this is the first time I have cried upon rereading the facts. Not that Ainger's writing can be called "sentimental." It is clear, calm, and objective -- exactly the style I like best in nonfiction. (If more biographies for young people had been written like this, I might today be reading biographies for pleasure instead of research.) Following an earlier reviewer's suggestion, I read Ainger's biography side by side with Leslie Bailey's and, while Bailey's does have some interesting tidbits absent from Ainger's account, it is a coffee-table book to this newer one. Nor does Ainger squander wordage with critical analysis of the works themselves, as too many literary and musical biographers do, to the probable annoyance of any reader whose critical opinion differs. I think that the key to what makes Ainger's easily the best biography I have yet read about either Gilbert, Sullivan, or both -- Steadman's on Gilbert is the only one that comes close -- is that Ainger treats them as people rather than icons. He doesn't gloss over the things that went wrong, but where possible he looks for human reasons why these things happened. If you want a really well-told reconstruction of the lives of influential Victorians, this is the shop for it.

As a student of the operatic stage, and currently in my Masters trainging, I have come to further appreciate reading for enjoyment and extended learning. Now in my mid-twenties, I have appeared in four (with a fifth waiting in the wings) Gilbert and Sullivan productions. Until I bought this book I had only a limited, but interesting knowledge of the calamity these men created.

I appreciated the thought and careful attention to detail that was put in this book. Two biographies in one kept it interesting and full of suspense until the very end, while not tiring or exhausting the reader with useless detail. Not only did I come to know more about my favorite of the opera repertoire, but I got a chance to spend half a decade in Victorian England (leaving me to wonder why we do not still write letters as a means of correspondence). The critical account that Mr. Ainger produces, not only provides us with the history behind the operas, but even the detailed happenings of the actors, authors, and composers individual lives. As an actor, I was able to transfer myself, almost placing myself, ex-oficio in the triumvirate of Gilbert, Sullivan, and D'Oyly Carte. I would have never imagined Sir Arthur Sullivan hob-knobbing with not only Englands elite, but the likes of Gioacchino Rossini, Clara Schumann and Charles Dickens. My only reservation with this book was that it tended to be slightly wordy in areas of very small importance, but hardly deterring from the kinship of the rest of the novel.

With much more knowledge to be obtained, and plenty of studying and years of school left, I am much more appreciative of the chances I have had to follow in the creator of the Major-General's foot steps, and would wholly recommend this book, riveting to the end, to any lover of Gilbert and Sullivan.