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''A Sensation Novel'' is a comic musical play in three acts (or volumes) written by the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, with music composed by Thomas German Reed. It was first performed on 31 January 1871 at the Royal Gallery of Illustration. New music was later composed by "Florian Pascal" (a pseudonym for Joseph Williams, Jr., 1847–1923),〔(Florian Pascal profile at the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive )〕〔("A Thirty-ninth Garland of British Light Music Composers" at MusicWeb International )〕〔(Songs by Florian Pascal )〕 and only four of German Reed's songs survive.〔(Article on ''Eyes and No Eyes'' at the G&S Archive )〕 The story concerns an author suffering from writers block, who finds out that the characters in his novel are dissatisfied. The piece satirises the sensation novels popular as pulp detective fiction in the Victorian era. Later in his career, when Gilbert wrote the famous series of Savoy operas with Arthur Sullivan, he reused elements of ''A Sensation Novel'' in their opera ''Ruddigore''. ==Background== ''A Sensation Novel'' is the fourth in a series of six short musical entertainments written by Gilbert for Thomas German Reed and his wife Priscilla between 1869 and 1875. The German Reeds presented respectable, family-friendly musical entertainments at their Gallery of Illustration beginning in 1855, at a time when the theatre in Britain had gained a poor reputation as an unsavoury institution and was not attended by much of the middle class. Shakespeare was played, but most of the entertainments available in theatres consisted of poorly translated French operettas, risqué burlesques and incomprehensible broad farces.〔(Bond, Jessie. Introduction to her memoir, available at the G&S Archive )〕 The Gallery of Illustration was a 500-seat theatre with a small stage that only allowed for four or five characters with accompaniment by a piano, harmonium and sometimes a harp. Pascal's new score, written more than twenty years later, sounds like early Debussy. It serves to bring the work to the stage, but has been criticised as sounding out of period for this 1871 work.〔(Information on the piece at the G&S Discography website )〕 ''A Sensation Novel'' satirises the sensation novels popular as pulp detective fiction in the Victorian era. The play concerns stock melodrama characters who take on a life of their own and comment negatively on the absurd plot their author forces them into. Music is a continual and essential element of the dramatic action throughout the piece. As scholar Jane W. Stedman observes in her book ''Gilbert Before Sullivan'', this play anticipates Luigi Pirandello's ''Six Characters in Search of an Author''. Fans of Gilbert and Sullivan will notice that Sir Ruthven Glenaloon prefigures Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd, Baronet of Ruddigore; Alice Grey, the virtuous heroine, is a foundling like Rose Maybud in ''Ruddigore''; and that other elements of the piece anticipate the Savoy Operas, including babies switched at birth and a self-decapitation. Gilbert's casting of the large, ungainly Richard Corney Grain as the "spirit of romance" was a joke that foreshadowed his casting of the rather large Rutland Barrington as the image of perfect manly beauty in ''Patience''.〔Walters, p. 16〕 Like some of Gilbert's other pieces for German Reed, most of the original score of ''A Sensation Novel'' is lost – four songs survive – although there have been re-settings by other composers. One such re-setting, by Mike Nash (including some Sullivan pastiche), with a libretto edited by director Mike Blum, is being produced in 2015 at the Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre in Baltimore, Maryland.〔Woodle, Morgan. ("''A Sensation Novel'' at Spotlighters Theatre" ), DCMetroTheaterArts, 13 September 2015〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「A Sensation Novel」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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