Gilbert And Sullivan

It wasn't stompin' at the Savoy Friday and Saturday, but rather the Savoy stompin' at Longwood Gardens. The 90-year-old opera company, founded in Merion, traveled to the horticultural attraction in Kennett Square to perform "Trial by Jury" and "The Sorcerer" for the several thousand Gilbert and Sullivan fans who attended. More than 4,000 people attended, and proceeds will go to benefit the Brandywine Conservancy, the Center for Autistic Children, Daemion House, the Delaware County SPCA, St. Christopher's Hospital and the Strafford Friends School.

Gilbert and Sullivan societies, community-based groups that perform the operettas of 19th-century English composers William S. Gilbert and Arthur S. Sullivan, have flourished in the United States since the early 1900s. Next Sunday, eight West Chester area residents plan to hold an organizational meeting of the Chester County Gilbert & Sullivan Society. The 3 p.m. meeting will be in Swope Hall at West Chester University. Gilbert and Sullivan operettas straddle the border between opera and light musical theater.

IN VICTORIAN England, musical-theater productions by Gilbert and Sullivan were the height of popular entertainment. The librettist (W.S. Gilbert) ?and composer (Arthur Sullivan) were prized for their comedic and operatic talents. They built London's Savoy Theater in 1881 as a home for their productions. But there's a Savoy in Philadelphia, too. Not a theater but a theater company that, at 111 years old, is almost as historic as the London original — and unlike its namesake, still exclusively devoted to the partners' work.

This is real entertainment. U.S. District Judge Robert S. Gawthrop is singing, dancing and prancing. He looks in a mirror, sighs, and tells everyone how incredibly handsome he is. It is Sunday, and Gawthrop - who has left his judicial robes behind for a snappy blue blazer, white pants and red bow tie - is working on a scene from Patience during a performance class at Basingstoke, a three-day symposium devoted to Gilbert and Sullivan....

"Oh, joyous boon! Oh, mad delight!" The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is coming to Philadelphia! Well, not exactly the famous English troupe that, for nearly a century, regaled audiences around the world with productions of the 14 comic operas of William S. Gilbert and Arthur S. Sullivan. That company, known as Savoyards after the Savoy Theatre in London, closed the final curtain on itself in 1982, to the dismay of Gilbert and Sullivan fans everywhere. But next July, 11 former D'Oyly Carte principals - including Kenneth Sandford, Gillian Knight, Patricia Leonard and John Ayldon - will appear in Philadelphia to present two full-scale Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, Ruddigore and The Sorcerer.

Some folks just don't get it. After more than a century of Mikados and boatloads of pirates from Penzance, there are still people unfamiliar with the musical cult that is Gilbert and Sullivan. Yet, in this part of the country, the unfamiliar may indeed be in the minority. Besides playing host to a whopping five Gilbert and Sullivan societies, the Philadelphia region is also home to one of the country's foremost authorities on the titans of operetta. Teacher, performer, director, author, Bruce "Monty" Montgomery may as well be known as "Mr. Gilbert and Sullivan" in this area.

Part of the fun of seeing Gilbert and Sullivan opera is in seeing the past determinedly preserved. No staging revolution has swept through the repertoire; the symbolists haven't set Pirates of Penzance on Wall Street, or placed H.M.S. Pinafore on a disk in gray light. That doesn't mean the past is forever, however. Some new ideas are pulsing in the oldest Gilbert and Sullivan company in the country, Philadelphia's Savoy. The source is Roberta Morrell, English-born singer and director who, in her local debut, is directing the mostly amateur but much-loved Savoy's production of The Mikado, which opens Friday at the Academy of Music.

When John Dennison showed up Friday night at the Warwick Hotel for the Gilbert and Sullivan audition, he couldn't help remembering another audition 41 years ago. It was at the Merriam Theater, then called the Shubert Theater, where the third International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival is now happening. Dennison, in 1955 a member of the New York City Center Opera Company, had managed to get an audition with the London-based D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. The D'Oyly Carte, the original Gilbert and Sullivan troupe, was making one of its periodic tours of the United States.

Peter A. Brindle met his future wife, Gari Nan, at the Savoy Company. Geoffrey R. Berwind joined the company because he is a fan of such famous Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas as H.M.S. Pinafore and he wanted to meet people. Hans Hartleben, vice president of Mellon Bank, found that being a member of the Savoy is therapeutic. It lets him relax and have fun. They all had different reasons for joining the Philadelphia amateur company that is celebrating its 85th season this year, but they have some things in common: a love for Gilbert and Sullivan operas and the ability to carry a tune.

To take a line from Yum-Yum in The Mikado: "Here's a how-de do. " Philadelphia next summer will host the third annual International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival, featuring a galaxy of stars from the original D'Oyly Carte Company and ballads and songs and snatches from all 13 of the comic operas by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. The festival is scheduled to run here for nine days, then reopen in Buxton, England, where the first two festivals took place last summer and in 1994.

IN VICTORIAN England, musical-theater productions by Gilbert and Sullivan were the height of popular entertainment. The librettist (W.S. Gilbert) ?and composer (Arthur Sullivan) were prized for their comedic and operatic talents. They built London's Savoy Theater in 1881 as a home for their productions. But there's a Savoy in Philadelphia, too. Not a theater but a theater company that, at 111 years old, is almost as historic as the London original — and unlike its namesake, still exclusively devoted to the partners' work.

Some folks just don't get it. After more than a century of Mikados and boatloads of pirates from Penzance, there are still people unfamiliar with the musical cult that is Gilbert and Sullivan. Yet, in this part of the country, the unfamiliar may indeed be in the minority. Besides playing host to a whopping five Gilbert and Sullivan societies, the Philadelphia region is also home to one of the country's foremost authorities on the titans of operetta. Teacher, performer, director, author, Bruce "Monty" Montgomery may as well be known as "Mr. Gilbert and Sullivan" in this area.

Bruce Bogdanoff called 12 members of the Rose Valley Chorus & Orchestra to order by playing "Pour, O Pour the Pirate Sherry" on the piano. The men - who had been talking, putting their coats down, picking up sword and hat props - broke into song, puffed up their chests, and swaggered as only men of the high seas can. "OK, let's just go through the music right now," Robin Greene said to start the rehearsal. The retired medical technologist from King of Prussia has been involved with the theater group since the 1960s, and like other members, has many W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan songs memorized.

Morris Rubinoff, 86, a retired professor of electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and a pioneer in computer technology, died of complications from cancer Thursday at Lankenau Hospital. In addition to teaching at Penn for 34 years, Dr. Rubinoff was an inventor who held several patents involving computer technology. In the 1950s, he helped design and develop the first simulated-flight trainer. At a computer conference in New Mexico in 1957, Dr. Rubinoff said that he was confident that computers could one day bring world peace.

The former Middletown firehouse was a hub of activity as the Rose Valley Chorus and Orchestra stage manager and crew put the final touches on scenery, chorus members warmed up, and actors reviewed dialogue. That's the way it has been since the spring, when members of the 96-year-old nonprofit organization began work on Me and My Girl, scheduled to open Friday. Controlled chaos, a sense of everyone and everything coming together, is the attraction for Bob Allen, the stage manager.

You know you're attending a performance of The Mikado because that's what it says on the program, but the version of the 19th-century operetta playing at Puttin' on the Ritz Theatre is clearly not the show Gilbert and Sullivan wrote. Because The Mikado - which librettist Gilbert placed in Japan - deals in ethnic stereotypes that many may find offensive, director Art McKenzie has placed the action in a California Gold Rush town, renamed the characters, and liberally rewritten the script.

Betty Ewen has never walked onto a stage or sung before an audience, but ask her anything about 19th-century musical theater, and you're likely to get a well-informed discourse on Gilbert and Sullivan. It is Ewen's feeling that the works of those Victorian-era geniuses are largely ignored today, especially by the young, in favor of loud music and incomprehensible lyrics. William S. Gilbert and Arthur S. Sullivan, for the uninitiated, were Englishmen who produced 14 comic operas over a 25-year span.

It doesn't sound like a terribly good idea: Mike Leigh, Britain's rigorous purveyor of kitchen-sink drama - tales of the homeless and unhappy, of mothers jettisoning children, of wan teens with eating disorders and career girls prematurely pining for their youth - essaying the story of those toe-tapping titans of Victorian musical theater, Gilbert and Sullivan. Maybe it doesn't sound like a good idea, but Topsy-Turvy, Leigh's sly and shimmering examination of the lives - and operettas - of William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Seymour Sullivan, is a triumph.

Not since Mickey Rooney turned "Hey, let's put on a show" into a plot device have moviemakers been as riveted by the theatrical process as they are today. "Shakespeare in Love," "The Imposters," "Illuminata" and the recent "Cradle Will Rock" have all gone behind the scenes of live performance, and this year, the approach has produced another apparent Oscar contender, "Topsy-Turvy. " The movie was named best picture of 1999 by one prominent critics' group (the movie was released in some cities last year)

With so many biographical movies taking great liberties with the truth (see "The Hurricane" or "JFK") the Daily News asked Gilbert and Sullivan expert Bruce Montgomery to vet "Topsy-Turvy" for both rhyme and reason. "Topsy-Turvy" writer-director Mike Leigh would have made a good many Gilbert and Sullivan aficionados happy had he included scenes from "H.M.S. Pinafore," "The Pirates of Penzance" or "The Yeomen of the Guard. " Instead, he chose a three-year chunk out of the G&S saga, showing us only 1883 to 1885.