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''His Excellency'' is a two-act comic opera with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by F. Osmond Carr. The piece concerns a practical-joking governor whose pranks threaten to make everyone miserable, until the Prince Regent kindly foils the governor's plans. Towards the end of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership, Arthur Sullivan declined to write the music for this piece after Gilbert insisted on casting his protege, Nancy McIntosh, in the lead role; Sullivan and producer Richard D'Oyly Carte, proprietor of the Savoy Theatre, did not feel that McIntosh was adequate. The opera premiered instead under the management of George Edwardes at the Lyric Theatre in London on 27 October 1894, closing on 6 April 1895 after a run of 162 performances. It starred many of the Savoy Theatre regulars, such as George Grossmith, Rutland Barrington and Jessie Bond, as well as Ellaline Terriss, who was to become a major West End star. It was also produced in New York at the Broadway Theatre on 14 October 1895 for a run of 88 performances, and in German translation at the Carltheater, Vienna, in both 1895 and 1897. The opera also enjoyed a British provincial tour. ==Background== From the late 1870s through the 1880s, Gilbert wrote a series of successful comic operas, working almost exclusively with Arthur Sullivan. The Gilbert and Sullivan partnership dissolved for several years after the production of ''The Gondoliers'' (1889), because of a financial dispute, but in 1893 they reunited to write ''Utopia, Limited''. Encouraged by the modest success of this piece, the two agreed to write a new piece. In January 1894, Gilbert was ready with the scenario for a libretto that would become ''His Excellency'', and which he hoped Sullivan would set to music. But the two collaborators disagreed over the casting of the leading lady. Gilbert insisted on using his protege, Nancy McIntosh, in the part, who had played the heroine in ''Utopia''. Sullivan and producer Richard D'Oyly Carte, along with many of the critics, had found her unimpressive and did not want her in any more of his operas. The two men were not able to settle their differences, and Gilbert and Sullivan once again had to find different partners. By 1894, the popular trend on the London stage had moved from traditional comic opera to a new genre, musical comedy, with such shows as ''The Gaiety Girl'' becoming quickly popular. Gilbert added elements of the new genre to his later works. In the case of ''His Excellency'', after approaching George Henschel unsuccessfully, Gilbert selected Carr as the composer for the new piece. Carr had enjoyed success in musical comedy, with ''In Town'' (1892), ''Morocco Bound'' (1893) and ''Go-Bang'' (1894), but critics inevitably found him inferior to Sullivan.〔〔〔 In ''His Excellency'', among other satiric targets, Gilbert ridicules Henry Labouchère's claims to impartiality in the song "When a gentleman supposes". Labouchère, whose lover Henrietta Hodson feuded with Gilbert in 1877,〔Vorder Bruegge, Andrew (Winthrop University). ("W. S. Gilbert: Antiquarian Authenticity and Artistic Autocracy" ). Paper presented at the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States annual conference in October 2002, accessed 26 March 2008〕 had been a frequent theatrical critic of Gilbert's.〔Stedman, pp. 157 and 255〕 Labouchère founded a personal weekly journal, ''Truth'', in 1877, in which he pursued his anti-semitic, anti-suffrage and anti-homosexual social agenda.〔Hirshfield, Claire. ("Labouchere, ''Truth'' and the Uses of Antisemitism", ) ''Victorian Periodicals Review'', Vol. 26, No. 3 (Fall, 1993), pp. 134–142〕 The journal was often sued for libel.〔''The Times'', 31 December 1957, p. 6〕 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「His Excellency (opera)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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