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''The Pretty Druidess; Or, The Mother, The Maid, and The Mistletoe Bough'' is an operatic burlesque by W. S. Gilbert. It was produced at the opening of the new Charing Cross Theatre on 19 June 1869 and ran until September of that year. The work was the last of five such burlesques that Gilbert wrote in the late 1860s. As in his other operatic burlesques, he chose a selection of operatic and popular tunes and wrote new words to fit them. The plot of the piece was loosely based on Vincenzo Bellini's 1831 opera ''Norma'', with dialogue in rhyming couplets full of complicated word-play and dreadful puns. Burlesques of this period featured actresses ''en travesti'' in tights or in dresses as short as possible without provoking the legal authorities. Gilbert later turned against this practice, and in his Savoy Operas no characters were played by members of the opposite sex. ==History== Gilbert's four earlier operatic burlesques, ''Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack'' (1866), ''La Vivandière; or, True to the Corps!'' (1867), ''The Merry Zingara; or, the Tipsy Gipsy and the Pipsy Wipsy'' (1868) and ''Robert the Devil, or The Nun, the Dun, and the Son of a Gun'' (1868) had parodied comic or romantic operas.〔Stedman, pp. 34–62〕 The critic of ''The Morning Post'' had asserted that parodying comic opera was a much more difficult undertaking than parodying tragic opera, and instanced ''Norma'' as "an eminently tragic work", far easier to burlesque.〔"Queen's Theatre", ''The Morning Post'', 23 January 1868, p. 5〕 The work was written for the opening of the new Charing Cross Theatre. It was the last of three pieces on the bill, following a short operetta, ''Coming of Age'', and the main item of the evening, a three-act drama, ''Edendale'', about families split by the American Civil War.〔"Charing Cross Theatre", ''The Era'', 27 June 1867, p. 14〕 The part of Norma was taken by Mary Frances Hughes, well-known on the London stage since her debut in November 1853.〔"First Appearances in London of Actors and Actresses", ''Era Almanack'', January 1870, p. 22〕 The hero, Pollio (a tenor in Bellini's original), was played as a breeches role by Cecily Nott, another favourite, who had made her debut in 1851, aged 18 or 19, a protégée of Louis Antoine Jullien.〔"Cicely Nott", ''Musical World'', 13 December 1851, p. 785〕 The ''ingénue'' role of the novice Adalgisa was played by Kathleen Irwin, who had made her London debut earlier the same evening, in ''Edendale''.〔〔 On the opening night, 19 June 1869, the performance started late because of noisy protests from patrons in the cheap standing area, the pit, about the lack of programmes. Gilbert's burlesque did not begin until after 11:00 p.m. The theatrical paper ''The Era'' reported, "Although it was nearly half an hour after midnight before the curtain fell, the jokes rattled rapidly off through continuous laughter, and Mr. Gilbert was summoned at the end to receive the congratulations of the house."〔 ''The Pretty Druidess'' was the last of a series of about a dozen early comic stage works by Gilbert, including operatic burlesques, pantomimes and farces. These were full of awful puns and jokes as was traditional in similar pieces of the period.〔Stedman, pp. 30–62〕 Nevertheless, Gilbert's burlesques were considered unusually tasteful compared to the others on the London stage.〔Crowther, Andrew. (''The Life of W. S. Gilbert'' ). The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive〕 Gilbert's early pokes at grand opera show signs of the satire that would later be a defining part of his work. He would depart even further from the burlesque style from about 1869 with plays containing original plots and fewer puns.〔〔(''The Cambridge History of English and American Literature'' ), Volume XIII, Chapter VIII, Section 15, (1907–21) (referring to ''Pygmalion and Galatea'', ''The Cambridge History'' states: "The satire is shrewd, but not profound; the young author is apt to sneer, and he has by no means learned to make the best use of his curiously logical fancy. That he occasionally degrades high and beautiful themes is not surprising. To do so had been the regular proceeding in burlesque, and the age almost expected it; but Gilbert's is not the then usual hearty cockney vulgarity."〕 The success of these 1860s pieces encouraged Gilbert in his playwriting and led to his next phase, which included more mature "fairy comedies", such as ''The Palace of Truth'' (1870) and ''Pygmalion and Galatea'' (1871), and his German Reed Entertainments, which in turn led to the famous Gilbert and Sullivan operas.〔〔Crowther, ''Contradiction Contradicted'', pp. 20–23〕 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 Pretty Druidess」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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