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''The Beauty Stone'' is an opera, billed as a "romantic musical drama" in three acts, composed by Arthur Sullivan to a libretto by Arthur Wing Pinero and J. Comyns Carr. The medieval Faustian story concerns an ugly, crippled girl, who dreams of being beautiful and meeting a handsome prince. The Devil offers her a magical stone that confers perfect beauty to anyone who wears it. The stone is passed from one character to another, but eventually the prince recognizes the girl's beautiful soul, the stone is discarded, and the disappointed Devil leaves the town. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 28 May 1898, closing on 16 July 1898 after a run of just 50 performances, making it the least successful of Sullivan's operas. Reviewers criticised the lyrics and lengthy dialogue scenes and the lack of humour in the story. Savoy audiences, accustomed to more comic and satiric pieces, did not find the opera attractive. The cast of ''The Beauty Stone'' included Savoy regulars Walter Passmore, Rosina Brandram, Ruth Vincent, Emmie Owen and Henry Lytton, as well as opera singer Pauline Joran. The opera was revived by the Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1901–02 on tour in a cut version. ==Background== When the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership collapsed after the production of ''The Gondoliers'' in 1889, their producer Richard D'Oyly Carte struggled to find successful new works to show at the Savoy Theatre. Carte produced Sullivan's grand opera, ''Ivanhoe'' at another theatre, and afterwards, he turned to Sullivan to create more comic operas for the Savoy. With Sydney Grundy, Sullivan wrote the nostalgic and sentimental ''Haddon Hall'' (1892) then, reunited with W. S. Gilbert, he produced ''Utopia, Limited'' (1893). He next returned, with his earlier collaborator F. C. Burnand, with ''The Chieftain'' (1894) and collaborated for the last time with Gilbert on ''The Grand Duke'' (1896). None of these had proved to be more than modestly successful, and Carte's other new pieces for the Savoy in the 1890s had done no better. Following the success of Sullivan's ballet ''Victoria and Merrie England'' in 1897, Carte asked Sullivan to work on another new opera for the Savoy.〔Coles, Clifton. (Notes on the text of ''The Beauty Stone'' ), The Gilbert & Sullivan Archive, accessed 5 October 2011〕 Carte assembled a high quality team for ''The Beauty Stone'', hoping for a hit. J. Comyns Carr had earlier written the text for Henry Irving's grand production of the King Arthur legend, for which Sullivan had provided the incidental music score in 1895. Sullivan had in the past considered the idea of an opera on the same subject and was pleased when Carr offered him a similarly romantic work with a medieval setting.〔Gordon-Powell, Robin. Notes to programme for Sir Arthur Sullivan Society Festival Concert, 16 September 2006, London〕 The eponymous beauty stone was a magical item that would transform its holder's appearance but would have unanticipated consequences. Sullivan seemed not to notice that this major element of the plot was simply a variant of the "magic lozenge" plot that Gilbert had so often proposed to the composer, and that he had repeatedly rejected.〔Gordon-Powell, Robin. Introduction to full score of ''The Beauty Stone'', The Amber Ring, (2010) ISMN M-708031-65-9〕 A. W. Pinero was at the height of his career in 1898, having produced several enduring successes in the 1890s, including ''The Second Mrs. Tanqueray'' (1893) and ''The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith'' (1895), and the same year as ''The Beauty Stone'' he would produce ''Trelawny of the 'Wells''' (1898). One of the most important, prolific and popular British playwrights, Pinero was later knighted for his services to dramatic authorship. Carr conceived of the basic idea of the libretto, that true beauty is an inner quality. Carr confined himself to writing the lyrics, however, and Pinero was brought in to work out the plot and write the dialogue.〔〔 Having brought together three such eminent talents, Carte had high expectations, and there was much anticipation in the press.〔 ''The Beauty Stone'' was conceived as a musical drama different in style from the productions that had preceded it at the Savoy Theatre. Sullivan's intention was to create a work halfway between the romantic flights of his grand opera ''Ivanhoe'' and the familiar humour of the earlier Savoy operas. The composer, however, soon found that Carr's lyrics were unwieldy and difficult to set to music.〔 In mid-December 1897, he wrote in his diary that his collaborators were difficult; when he asked for changes in the construction of the piece, they refused to make the alterations.〔Jacobs, p. 384〕 He was forced to involve Helen Carte to mediate the disagreements with his collaborators. Even so, Sullivan continued to be disappointed in what he had to work with. In February 1898, he wrote in his diary: "()eartbreaking to have to try to make a musical piece out of such badly constructed (for music) mess of involved sentences."〔Parry, William. ("Liner notes to ''The Beauty Stone''" ), Chandos, 2013, pp. 22–25〕 Nevertheless, after working further with Carr in March, he was able to work out the key difficulties, and his struggles with the complexity of the lyrics seems to have inspired some of Sullivan's longest melodic lines and interesting musical settings.〔〔Still, Sullivan later told the ''Daily News'', "I think the work has proved more arduous than anything else I have ever done". ''Quoted'' in Gordon-Powell, Robin. Introduction to full score of ''The Beauty Stone'', The Amber Ring, (2010) ISMN M-708031-65-9〕 Rehearsals began early in April 1898.〔 Moreover, the Savoy was not the right place to produce such a drama, because its audience was used to seeing comic operas focused on wit, humour and Gilbertian satire. To provide them with a mostly dark-toned romantic piece consisting of pseudo-medieval dialogue (and too much of it), lengthy grand-operatic musical numbers and a serious exploration of complex characters turned out to be a grave mistake.〔〔 In addition, ''The Beauty Stone'' is a very long piece – it played for nearly four hours on opening night; several items were cut soon after opening night, but the cuts did not improve matters.〔 At the same time, competition from the new theatrical art form of George Edwardes-style musical comedy produced at other London theatres offered lighthearted entertainment choices to the Savoy audience, with catchy tunes, dancing and witty banter.〔 For a modern audience, however, there is much to admire about ''The Beauty Stone''. Pinero's book, though overly long, contains vivid characters with psychological depth that Sullivan was able to develop more fully than in his shorter comic operas. The complex way in which these characters react to the beauty stone makes this plot device different from the way Gilbert treated his magic lozenges and gave Sullivan a chance to employ rich musical portraits of yearning, despair, love and beauty.〔 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「The Beauty Stone」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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