Ruddigore
W. S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan
(1887)
New production

Gilbert and Sullivan’s witty burlesque Victorian melodrama is one of their most inventive confections.

When mild-mannered Robin Oakapple is revealed as the villainous Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd, inheritor of the curse of Ruddigore (he must commit a crime everyday), his romance with the faultlessly virtuous Rose Maybud looks doomed. But his troubles really start when he proves singularly unequal to the task of fulfilling the curse, and his ancestors’ portraits begin to haunt him…

Although still in his thirties, John Wilson already has an enviable reputation as a conductor, arranger and orchestrator, with a special flair for light music. With direction by Jo Davies, whose work spans musical and spoken theatre as well as opera, and sets and costumes by distinguished designer Richard Hudson, the team will ensure that Opera North’s new production supplies a welcome Winter treat.

Sung in English
Lasts approximately 2 hours 30 minutes

“Hudson has conceived a magnificent interior for Ruddigore castle, and the animation of the ancestral portraits is a dazzling coup de théâtre…” Rupert Christiansen, The Daily Telegraph 4*

“The cast in top-notch, and Davies has clearly directed every member with sensitivity…John Wilson conducts with a light touch, allowing everyone to get the words across without mikes or surtitles." Rupert Christiansen, The Daily Telegraph 4*

"This is operetta bliss...a must for all G&S fans.” Rupert Christiansen, The Daily Telegraph 4*

“This is one of the great Gilbert and Sullivan stagings – on a par with Jonathan Miller’s famous production of The Mikado and just as worthy of cult status in years to come.” Tim Ashley, The Guardian 5*
 
“What a ruddy good job Opera North make of Ruddigore." Richard Morrison, The Times 4*

"This scrupulously faithful presentation should win Ruddigore many new admirers.” Richard Morrison, The Times 4*

“Here the result is not just a major hit for Opera North but one of the best Gilbert and Sullivan productions for decades.” George Hall, The Stage

Cast includes: Gordon Sandison, Harold Innocent, John Ayldon, Thomas Lawlor, Marilyn Hill Smith, Linda Ormiston, Joan Davis
The New Sadler’s Wells Opera Company
Simon Phipps – conductor
Jay Records CDJAY2 1340, 2CDs, full price, no libretto

NB Availability of this is currently limited
 

Jo Davies makes her Opera North debut, directing Gilbert & Sullivan's Ruddigore. We caught up with her during rehearsals...

Have you directed any Gilbert & Sullivan or similar kinds of productions before?
I’ve never directed a Gilbert & Sullivan (G&S) before but my first job, in an amateur context, was as an ASM on Ruddigore. I used to sit in the wings and watch numbers like ‘I Once Was a Very Abandoned Person’ and I really loved it. I have, however, directed comedies before and my experience directing Shakespeare has helped me get behind the text of Ruddigore, which is quite complicated in places. I’m really enjoying directing a G&S for the first time.

What attracted you to Ruddigore specifically as a piece to direct?
It has a great story and a fabulous investigation of style. The satire in this piece centres around melodrama and I got attracted to the playfulness and inherent theatricality of that genre. It means there’s a lot of emphasis on the style of performance and that’s really exciting to play around with as a theatre director.

What do you think will be the highlights of the production?
I hope the highlight will be the contemporary and current energy of it, and the deftness and precision of wit, which I think of as trademark G&S. The energy that’s contained within the words and music is incredibly vibrant and I’d like it to feel readily accessible, but with a certain sense of style.

Can you tell us a bit more about how the production is going to look and some of the reasons behind these creative decisions?
W.S. Gilbert was parodying melodramatic stereotypes through the piece and I started to think about where I’d first encountered these morally absolute characters. I realised my familiarity with them came not from theatre but from film; more specifically from early silent movies. I looked at a lot of these images and movies with designer Richard Hudson and we decided to base the look and feel of the production around it. As such, the sets and costumes are going to have a late 1920s influence and much of the production will have the appearance of sepia photography or film stills brought to life. We’re also drawing a lot on the style of vaudeville theatre from that same era, which allows us to have a front-cloth and do some great vaudevillian front-cloth scenes during set changes. We’re also staging the finale of Act I in a church rather than on the village green as we felt it heightened the dramatic tension to see Rose just on the point of being married before it’s thwarted by Despard.

At the model showing (preview of the production) you talked about the G&S stories you’ve been hearing from wide-ranging people; do you have one of your own?
I do have one but I’m almost too embarrassed to tell it. After being an ASM on Ruddigore aged 13 I got very excited about G&S. Then I heard that the boys’ school was going to do The Pirates of Penzance, and wanted girls to play the female roles. So I got hold of a score and went to the audition, although I wasn’t a soprano at all! I still maintain I couldn’t sing a note of my audition piece, but simply clouded it by trying to be funny, and somehow got the part. Then on the last night, at the moment when Mabel has to sing ‘Poor Wand’ring One’ with the chorus echoing her, I started singing the wrong verse. The chorus got lost and didn’t know whether to echo me or sing the words they’d actually learnt. It was a right mess! Instead of carrying on, I actually stopped singing, stopped the chorus and the orchestra and told the audience that it was me who’d gone wrong, not the chorus! The conductor looked at me as though I was from another planet, but I was only about 16! I’ve got a very fond memory therefore of G&S as something that gave me so much confidence in that moment as a performer, because I knew that the audience would be 100% with us whatever happened. I knew then that the material was good and could feel the very real and genuine affection that people have for it.

What do you think this version of Ruddigore has to offer to G&S enthusiasts?
I think it’s very faithful - not in an anachronistic or historical way but faithful to the spirit and energy that both Gilbert & Sullivan seemed to want in their productions. I hope this will be exciting to G&S enthusiasts. In my view that’s what G&S is all about – the sheer energy of the satirical wit combined with the pinpoint accuracy of the music that Sullivan writes. It’s such brilliantly structured material and I hope that our treatment of it will appeal.

What do you think will appeal to opera lovers who are not necessarily that familiar with G&S about the production?
Well I don’t feel it’s too different from something like Mozart; his comedy has the same kind of comic precision as G&S. If you like comic opera, I think this should appeal in the same way. John Wilson our conductor said it’s a fabulous combination of English church music and Italian opera! I would say it’s also one of Gilbert & Sullivan’s most operatic works. In fact, Sullivan wrote his most famous orchestral work The Golden Legend just before he wrote Ruddigore and on the strength of this was hailed as the best British composer of his age. The Golden Legend actually premiered at the Leeds Music Festival so he was actually in Leeds as he started work on Ruddigore which makes this a fitting location for a new production.

This is your Opera North debut – how are you finding your experience with the company?
I’m thoroughly enjoying it. Everyone’s very supportive and seems very enthusiastic about the production. I adore the chorus – they’re so witty and funny and generally up for anything. So this piece really suits them. We have a fantastic cast too - not just great singers, but people who are genuinely and actively interested in acting which is wonderful for me and for the piece. Also everyone seems very nice – it’s only week 2 and so we’re still in the honeymoon period, but it’s great to have fun people working on a funny piece around Christmas time.

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Grant Doyle talks to us about singing Robin Oakapple.

Can you tell me a bit about your character, Robin Oakapple? What are your feelings about him and is he someone that you can identify with in any way?
Robin is a very easy character to identify with. He’s the straight man in the show; he has a good moral compass. He comes from a family of baronets and has to flee from his home at a young age and adopt a disguise because he’s horrified at the prospect of having to be evil. So yes, he’s a very easy character to relate to because he’s the ‘everyman’ and I’m a good guy so I find it easy to play good guys! Another great thing about Robin as a character is that he gets discovered halfway through and he has to play the part of the evil baronet, which is a gift for a performer. It’s a lot of fun because Robin, or Ruthven, isn’t very good at being evil. He puts on this mask and tries to be this evil incarnate baronet but he fails miserably at everything he tries to do.

What do you think are the specific challenges involved in performing in a Gilbert and Sullivan piece as opposed to some of the other operas you’ve appeared in?
One of the biggest challenges of doing Gilbert and Sullivan rather than ‘grand opera’ is not to underestimate it. You have to approach G&S like you do with any high art. It’s not high art - it’s light music and it’s light theatre - but it’s been so finely crafted and honed that you have to extract everything from the music and the text as indications of how it should be communicated to the audience. I think it’s good for opera singers to have a go at G&S if they’ve got a flair for comedy, dialogue and the acting side of things but the discipline required is still the same. You still have to analyse every note and every word and find out what is and what isn’t important and how it should be shaped and performed.

How are you finding the rehearsal process?
Rehearsals are going really well so far - it’s a lovely company to work with and I think we’re all on the same wavelength. Jo as a director is fantastically nurturing and really tries to find out what it is that you do best without trying to impose too much of what she thinks. She really wants to extract the best from you and from that you get the sense of a great collaborative effort and people being true to themselves as performers.

What are you most looking forward to about your part in the production?
Robin has some great scenes with the other principals; the opening scene with Rose Maybud is lovely and then there’s another great scene with his foster brother Richard Dauntless. Obviously, there’s the revelation of his true identity as the evil Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd in the First Act finale and there’s the opening of Act Two where we find Robin as Sir Ruthven in the Ruddigore Castle, practising being villainous. I’m looking forward to that and Jo suggested that there may be room for some kind of hilarity going on during the introduction to this number!

 Jo has mentioned that many people have their own ‘Gilbert and Sullivan stories’ – what has your own relationship with their work been to date?
 I don’t have one of those stories but I have had the opportunity to appear in some professional G&S productions; I sang Pooh-Bah in The Mikado which was a joy and the role of Luiz in The Gondoliers was my Sydney Opera House debut when I was much younger. I also appeared as the Learned Judge in Trial by Jury which, like the role of Robin, is the comic baritone role. It is definitely something I’d like to do more of in the future and Robin’s a great place to start because he’s a young man so you can do it is a young man and then progress from there. This is also my first leading role with Opera North, a company that excels in producing light, comic opera, and I’m hoping that it will be a springboard for me into more of these kinds of productions.

 What do you think this particular production has to offer to Gilbert and Sullivan enthusiasts?
I think that it’ll be appealing in that it’s a rare opportunity to see it performed by a professional company in an opera house setting. I also think that in the past Ruddigore has undeservedly had a bit of a bad name because it came on the heels of The Mikado. I think that at times it has been quite underrated and I’m hoping that this production will redress the balance and show it to be the masterpiece that it is.

Why should an opera audience come and see this production?
If you’re a music lover you will find that the music of Ruddigore is actually very good. The bass aria from the famous ghost scene, for example, was one of the first arias I learned as a serious opera aria and it really requires a serious singer. In this production we’ve got Steven Page, who’s a proper opera bass, doing it and it’s going to sound magnificent. Opera lovers who aren’t especially fond of G&S or don’t know it that well should come and see this one because they will hear it sung by professional voices and the brilliant standard of the Opera North chorus and orchestra will not let them down.

 

Act 1

In the 18th-century village of Rederring, in Cornwall with it’s corps of professional bridesmaids, Rose remains unwed. She is courted by Robin, but her primness and his shyness stand in the way. Richard, a sailor and Robin’s foster-brother, volunteers to commend Robin’s suit to Rose. Instead, he successfully proposes to her on his own behalf – only to see her change her mind again and embrace Robin. Mad Margaret enters, her madness induced by love for Sir Despard, the current ‘bad baronet of Ruddigore’: each successive holder of the title is condemned by a curse to commit a crime a day. The entry of Sir Despard terrifies all, but Despard hates his role and is delighted when Richard (claiming to act from a sense of duty, but really anxious to prise Rose from Robin) reveals that Robin is in fact Sir Ruthven, an elder brother who should have inherited the baronetcy and its curse. Rose returns to Richard and Despard to Margaret.

 

Act 2

Robin, now the villainous Sir Ruthven, faces the judgement of his ancestors for failing to commit his daily crime. The ancestors rise from their pictured images. They live a merry life (the resurrected Sir Roderic tells of their festival, ‘the ghosts of high noon’) but now sternly compel Robin to ‘carry off a lady’. Despard and Margaret enter as reformed characters; any reversion to madness on her part can be cured by the word ‘Basingstoke’. Robin’s servant Adam, dispatched to abduct a lady, brings back Dame Hannah, who draws a dagger and has Robin at her mercy when the ghostly Sir Roderic intervenes. Hannah and he recognise each other as old lovers. Robin argues that to fail to commit a crime is, for a bad baronet, tantamount to suicide; but suicide is a crime, so Sir Roderic should never have died at all! Roderic embraces Hannah, Robin (no longer villainous) embraces Rose, and Richard is content with the principal bridesmaid.
 

• The low down on one of the best from G&S

  (Lasts approximately 23 minutes)

  Director, Jo Davies and Conductor, John Wilson talk to writer and broadcaster Edward Seckerson about cunning disguises, dastardly deeds, and an abundance of cracking good tunes, in Opera North's first G&S production for 20 years.

• Listen to an excerpt from Ruddigore, John Yap

  (Lasts approximately 30 secs)

• Audience Reactions

  

  Find out what people are saying about the production...