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''The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu'' is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations. It opened on 14 March 1885, in London, where it ran at the Savoy Theatre for 672 performances, which was the second longest run for any work of musical theatre and one of the longest runs of any theatre piece up to that time.〔Gillan, Don. (Longest runs in the theatre up to 1920. )〕〔The longest-running piece of musical theatre was the operetta ''Les Cloches de Corneville'', which held the title until ''Dorothy'' opening in 1886, which pushed ''The Mikado'' down to third place.〕 Before the end of 1885, it was estimated that, in Europe and America, at least 150 companies were producing the opera.〔Mencken, H. L. (Article on ''The Mikado'' ). ''Baltimore Evening Sun'', 29 November 1910〕 ''The Mikado'' remains the most frequently performed Savoy Opera, and it is especially popular with amateur and school productions. The work has been translated into numerous languages and is one of the most frequently played musical theatre pieces in history. Setting the opera in Japan, an exotic locale far away from Britain, allowed Gilbert to satirise British politics and institutions more freely by disguising them as Japanese. Gilbert used foreign or fictional locales in several operas, including ''The Mikado'', ''Princess Ida'', ''The Gondoliers'', ''Utopia, Limited'' and ''The Grand Duke'', to soften the impact of his pointed satire of British institutions. ==Origins== Gilbert and Sullivan's opera immediately preceding ''The Mikado'' was ''Princess Ida'', which ran for nine months; a short duration by Savoy opera standards.〔Traubner, p. 162〕 When ticket sales for Gilbert and Sullivan's 1884 collaboration, ''Princess Ida'', showed early signs of flagging, the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte realised that, for the first time since 1877, no new Gilbert and Sullivan work would be ready when the old one closed. On 22 March 1884, Carte gave Gilbert and Sullivan contractual notice that a new opera would be required within six months.〔Jacobs, p. 187〕 Sullivan's close friend, the conductor Frederic Clay, had suffered a serious stroke in December 1883 that effectively ended his career. Reflecting on this, on his own precarious health, and on his desire to devote himself to more serious music, Sullivan replied to Carte that "it is impossible for me to do another piece of the character of those already written by Gilbert and myself".〔Crowther, Andrew. ("The Carpet Quarrel Explained" ), The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, 28 June 1997, accessed 6 November 2007〕〔Ainger, p. 226〕 Gilbert, who had already started work on a new libretto in which people fall in love against their wills after taking a magic lozenge, was surprised to hear of Sullivan's hesitation. He wrote to Sullivan asking him to reconsider, but the composer replied on 2 April 1884 that he had "come to the end of my tether" with the operas: Gilbert was much hurt, but Sullivan insisted that he could not set the "lozenge plot." In addition to the "improbability" of it, it was too similar to the plot of their 1877 opera, ''The Sorcerer''. Sullivan returned to London, and, as April wore on, Gilbert tried to rewrite his plot, but he could not satisfy Sullivan. The parties were at a stalemate, and Gilbert wrote, "And so ends a musical & literary association of seven years' standing – an association of exceptional reputation – an association unequaled in its monetary results, and hitherto undisturbed by a single jarring or discordant element."〔Ainger, p. 232〕 However, by 8 May 1884, Gilbert was ready to back down, writing: "am I to understand that if I construct another plot in which no supernatural element occurs, you will undertake to set it? ... a consistent plot, free from anachronisms, constructed in perfect good faith & to the best of my ability."〔Ainger, p. 233〕 The stalemate was broken, and on 20 May, Gilbert sent Sullivan a sketch of the plot to ''The Mikado''.〔 It would take another ten months for ''The Mikado'' to reach the stage. A revised version of their 1877 work, ''The Sorcerer'', coupled with their one-act piece ''Trial by Jury'' (1875), played at the Savoy while Carte and their audiences awaited their next work. Gilbert eventually found a place for his "lozenge plot" in ''The Mountebanks'', written with Alfred Cellier in 1892. In 1914, Cellier and Bridgeman first recorded the familiar story of how Gilbert found his inspiration: The story is an appealing one, but it is largely fictional.〔Jones (1985), p. 22〕 Gilbert was interviewed twice about his inspiration for ''The Mikado''. In both interviews the sword was mentioned, and in one of them he said it was the inspiration for the opera, although he never said that the sword had fallen. What puts the entire story in doubt, moreover, is Cellier and Bridgeman's error concerning the Japanese exhibition in Knightsbridge:〔 It did not open until 10 January 1885, almost two months after Gilbert had already completed Act I.〔〔Jones (2007), p. 687〕 Gilbert scholar Brian Jones, in his article "The Sword that Never Fell", notes that "the further removed in time the writer is from the incident, the more graphically it is recalled."〔Jones (1985), p. 25〕 Leslie Baily, for instance, told it this way in 1952: The story was dramatised in more-or-less this form in the 1999 film ''Topsy-Turvy''. However, even though the 1885–87 Japanese exhibition in Knightsbridge had not opened when Gilbert conceived of ''The Mikado'', European trade with Japan had increased in recent decades, and an English craze for all things Japanese had built through the 1860s and 1870s. This made the time ripe for an opera set in Japan.〔Jones (2007), pp. 688–93〕 Gilbert told a journalist, "I cannot give you a good reason for our ... piece being laid in Japan. It ... afforded scope for picturesque treatment, scenery and costume, and I think that the idea of a chief magistrate, who is ... judge and actual executioner in one, and yet would not hurt a worm, may perhaps please the public."〔(Quoted at Lyricoperasandiego.com )〕〔Gilbert, W. S. "The Evolution of ''The Mikado''", ''New York Daily Tribune'', 9 August 1885〕 In an 1885 interview with the ''New York Daily Tribune'', Gilbert stated that the short stature of Leonora Braham, Jessie Bond and Sybil Grey "suggested the advisability of grouping them as three Japanese school-girls" referred to in the opera as the "three little maids". He also recounted that a young Japanese lady, a tea-server from the Japanese village, came to rehearsals to coach the three little maids in some native Japanese dances.〔 On 12 February 1885, one month before ''The Mikado'' opened, the ''Illustrated London News'' wrote about the opening of the Japanese village noting, among other things, that "the graceful, fantastic dancing featured... three little maids!"〔''Illustrated London News'', 12 February 1885, p. 143〕 The title character appears only in Act II of the opera. Gilbert related that he and Sullivan had decided to cut the Mikado's Act II only solo song, but that members of the company and others who had witnessed the dress rehearsal "came to us in a body and begged us to restore ()".〔 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 Mikado」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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