Richard D'Oyly Carte

Richard D'Oyly Carte (May 3 1844 – April 3 1901) was an English theatrical impresario during the latter half of the nineteenth century. He is best known for producing the Savoy Operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, founding the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and building both the Savoy Theatre and the Savoy Hotel.

Life and Career

Carte was born in Soho's Greek Street in the West End of London, the eldest of six children. Of Welsh and Norman ancestry (D'Oyly is Norman French^[1]), Carte was brought up in a cultured home. Carte's father, Richard Carte, was a flautist, music publisher and musical instrument maker, his mother was the former Eliza Jones, and the younger Carte was raised with a musical background, playing violin and then flute at an early age. The family spoke French at home two days a week. He attended the University School of London but left in 1861 to work in his father's music publishing and instrument manufacturing business, Rudall, Carte & Co. He also studied music during this time.^[2]

Carte was married twice. His first wife was Blanche Julia Prowse, the daughter of a piano manufacturer. They married in 1871 and had two sons, Lucas and Rupert. Blanche died in 1885. Three years later, he married Helen Lenoir (born Susan Couper Black), whom he had originally employed as a secretary in 1877. Helen D'Oyly Carte became intensely involved in all the business affairs of her husband and had a grasp of detail, organisational ability, diplomacy and acumen that surpassed even her husband's. The couple's London home included the first private elevator.

Carte died on April 3 1901. He is buried in the churchyard of St. Andrew's church in Fairlight, East Sussex, near his parents' graves.

Early career

Between 1868 and 1877, Carte wrote and published the music for a number of his own songs and instrumental works, as well as four comic operas, Doctor Ambrosias—His Secret, Marie, The Doctor in Spite of Himself and Happy Hampstead. The first of these was performed at St. George's Opera House in 1868, the third was produced at the Opera Comique, and the last was first produced for an 1876 provincial tour. At the same time, Carte was beginning to build an operatic and concert management agency, while also acting as a concert and lecture agent. His clients included Charles Gounod, Adelina Patti, and Edward Lloyd. In 1870, Carte suggested to Arthur Sullivan that he compose a comic opera. Sullivan was busy with other projects, and declined.

Founding his opera company

In 1875, he became the business manager of the Royalty Theatre, under the direction of Madame Selina Dolaro. The first show he booked was Jacques Offenbach's La Périchole. Because the opera was short, he commissioned W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan to write a one-act comic opera to fill out the evening, which became Trial by Jury. Trial was a surprise hit.

Carte hoped that English light operas would supplant the badly translated and bawdy French operettas that dominated the London stage. Building on the success of Trial, he formed the Comedy Opera Company to produce the future works of Gilbert and Sullivan, along with the works of other British lyricist/composer teams. Carte leased the Opera Comique, a small theatre off The Strand. The first comic opera produced by the new partnership was The Sorcerer in 1877, and Carte's agency provided many of the artists to perform in the new work. The success of The Sorcerer showed Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan that there was a future in English comic opera.

It was followed by H.M.S. Pinafore in 1878. Business for the new opera was slow at first. Carte's partners in the Comedy Opera Company advocated cutting their losses and closing the show. Carte persuaded the author and composer that a business partnership among the three of them would be profitable. He used the enforced closure of the Opéra Comique for repairs to evoke a contract clause reverting the rights of Pinafore and Sorcerer to Gilbert and Sullivan, who entrusted them to him. The three each put up £1,000 and formed a new partnership, and The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company became the sole producer of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Pinafore became a huge hit in Britain and America, and Carte's former partners attempted to repossess the production by force during a performance, causing a celebrated fracas.^[3] Indeed, Pinafore was so successful that over a hundred unauthorised productions sprang up in America alone. Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte tried for many years to control the American performance copyrights over their operas, without success.^[4] Pinafore was followed by The Pirates of Penzance in 1879 and Patience in 1881.

Savoy Theatre c.1881

Savoy Hotel, Strand entrance

During the years when the Gilbert and Sullivan operas were being written, Richard D'Oyly Carte also produced operas by other composer–librettist teams, either as curtain-raisers to the G&S pieces, or to fill the theatre in between G&S pieces and to broaden the offerings of his touring companies. Carte also introduced the practice of licensing amateur theatrical societies to present works for which he had the rights, increasing their popularity and the sales of scores and libretti, as well as the rental of band parts.

Real estate interests

With profits from the success of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership and his concert and lecture agency (his talent roster included Adelina Patti, Oscar Wilde, and Charles Gounod), Carte bought property further East along the Strand with frontage onto the Thames Embankment, where he built the Savoy Theatre and the elaborate Savoy Hotel. He chose the name to memorialize the history of the property: In 1246, King Henry III granted the land to Peter, Count of Savoy, the uncle of his wife, Eleanor of Provence. The Savoy Palace, a very large and elegant palace, was built on the property. It later passed to John of Gaunt, 2nd Duke of Lancaster, and was burned during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381. The Savoy Hotel became a well-known luxury hotel and would generate more income and contribute more to the D'Oyly Carte fortunes than any other enterprise, including the opera companies.

Patience transferred to the new theatre on October 10 1881. At the time, the Savoy seated nearly 1,300 people and was the first public building to be lit entirely with electric light. At a performance shortly after it opened, Carte stepped on stage and broke a glowing lightbulb to demonstrate the safety of the new technology. Iolanthe was the first opera to open at the Savoy Theatre.

Carte also owned a small island in the River Thames, between Weybridge and Shepperton, located near Shepperton Lock. He built a house on the island.^[5]

End of the partnership; Royal English Opera House

Gilbert and Sullivan had an often tumultuous relationship, and Carte frequently had to smooth over their differences with a mixture of friendship and business acumen. Carte was able to coax five more comic operas out of his partners in the 1880s. The musical establishment and Sullivan's friends put pressure on the composer to abandon comic opera, and Sullivan asked to be released from the partnership on several occasions.

Ivanhoe program cover

During the run of the last Gilbert and Sullivan success, The Gondoliers, the three partners quarreled over production costs, including the cost of a new carpet for the Savoy Theatre lobby. The partnership temporarily ended in acrimony. Gilbert brought suit, and Sullivan sided with Carte — Carte was building the Royal English Opera House in Cambridge Circus, London, close to Covent Garden, to present Sullivan's forthcoming grand opera.

Carte's first production at the Royal English Opera House was of Sullivan's only grand opera, Ivanhoe opening in January 1891. The opera was a success, playing for 155 performances, but no other operas shared the new opera house with it. Instead, Ivanhoe was presented every night with alternating casts. When Ivanhoe finally closed in July, Carte had no new work ready to play at the opera house, and it had to close. The opera house re-opened in November, with André Messager's La Basoche (originally produced in 1890 at the Opéra Comique in Paris) at first alternating in repertory with Ivanhoe, and then La Basoche alone, closing in January 1892.

There was nothing to replace it, and the venture soon failed. Sir Henry Wood, who had been répétiteur for the production, recalled in his autobiography that "[i]f D'Oyly Carte had had a repertory of six operas instead of only one, I believe he would have established English opera in London for all time. Towards the end of the run of Ivanhoe I was already preparing The Flying Dutchman with Eugène Oudin in the name part. He would have been superb. However, plans were altered and the Dutchman was shelved."^[6] Carte leased the theatre to Sarah Bernhardt for a season and finally abandoned the project. He sold the huge opera house at a loss. It was then converted into a music hall:the Palace Theatre of Varieties and later became the Palace Theatre.^[2]

Later years

"Spy" cartoon in Vanity Fair

After the carpet quarrel, with The Gondoliers closing in 1891 and no more Gilbert and Sullivan operas being written, Carte turned to old friends George Dance, Frank Desprez and Edward Solomon for his next piece, The Nautch Girl, which ran for a satisfying 200 performances in 1891-92. Carte next revived Solomon and Sydney Grundy's The Vicar of Bray, which ran through the summer of 1892 until Grundy and Sullivan's Haddon Hall was ready. This held the stage until April 1893.

Carte and his wife (with help from their music publisher) were finally able to convince Gilbert and Sullivan to collaborate on another piece, Utopia, Limited. Until it was ready, Jane Annie, by J. M. Barrie and Arthur Conan Doyle, with music by Ernest Ford, was produced as a stop-gap. Utopia opened in 1893, but it was the partnership's most expensive production to date, and it ran for a comparatively disappointing 245 performances, until June 1894. The Savoy then played first Mirette by Harry Greenbank and Fred E. Weatherly, with music by André Messager; then The Chieftain, by F. C. Burnand and Arthur Sullivan. This was followed by The Grand Duke, in 1896, which ran for only 123 performances and was the last collaboration between Gilbert and Sullivan.

Throughout the later 1890s, Carte's health was in decline, and Mrs. Carte assumed more and more of the responsibilities for the opera company. She profitably managed the theatre and the provincial touring companies. The Savoy put on a number of shows for comparatively short runs, including Sullivan's The Beauty Stone, in 1898. In 1899, Carte finally had a success again, with Sullivan and Basil Hood's The Rose of Persia. Neither Carte nor Sullivan lived to see the success of The Emerald Isle for which Edward German completed the score.

Primary works as a composer

• Dr. Ambrosius — His Secret (1868)
• Marie (1871)
• The Doctor in Spite of Himself (1871) (based on a Molière work)
• Happy Hampstead (1876), with librettist Frank Desprez

Carte's Parlour songs include:

• "Stars of the Summer Night" Serenade, with poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• "Questions" Song, with words by Desprez
• "Twilight" Canzonet
• "Pourquoi?" Chansonette, dedicated to Selina Dolaro
• "The Maiden's Watch" Song with words by Amy Thornton, composed for and sung by Adelaide Newton
• "The Mountain Boy", sung by Florence Lancia

Notes

References

• Baily, Leslie (1966). The Gilbert and Sullivan Book, new ed., London: Spring Books. 

• Fitz-Gerald, S. J. Adair (1924). The Story of the Savoy Opera. London: Stanley Paul & Co.. 

• Hibbert, Christopher (1976). Gilbert & Sullivan and Their Victorian World. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc. 

• Joseph, Tony (1994). D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, 1875-1982: An Unofficial History. London: Bunthorne Books.  ISBN 0-950-79921-1

• Wilson, Robin; Frederic Lloyd (1984). Gilbert & Sullivan – The Official D'Oyly Carte Picture History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.. 

External links

• Article on the Carte family
• Biography of Richard D'Oyly Carte
• Article on Richard D'Oyly Carte
• Profile of Richard D'Oyly Carte
• Account of the "Fracas at the Opera Comique" in 1879

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