The Beauty Stone
The Beauty Stone is an opera, billed as a "romantic musical drama" in three acts, composed by Arthur Sullivan to a libretto by Arthur Wing Pinero and J. Comyns Carr. The medieval Faustian story concerns an ugly, crippled girl, who dreams of being beautiful and meeting a handsome prince. The Devil offers her a magical stone that confers perfect beauty to anyone who wears it. The stone is passed from one character to another, but eventually the prince recognizes the girl's beautiful soul, the stone is discarded, and the disappointed Devil leaves the town.
It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 28 May 1898, closing on 16 July 1898 after a run of just 50 performances, making it the least successful of Sullivan's operas. Reviewers criticised the lyrics and lengthy dialogue scenes and the lack of humour in the story. Savoy audiences, accustomed to more comic and satiric pieces, did not find the opera attractive. The cast of The Beauty Stone included Savoy regulars Walter Passmore, Rosina Brandram, Ruth Vincent, Emmie Owen and Henry Lytton, as well as opera singer Pauline Joran.
The opera was revived by the Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1901–02 on tour in a cut version.
Background
When the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership collapsed after the production of The Gondoliers in 1889, their producer Richard D'Oyly Carte struggled to find successful new works to show at the Savoy Theatre. Carte produced Sullivan's grand opera, Ivanhoe at another theatre, and afterwards, he turned to Sullivan to create more comic operas for the Savoy. With Sydney Grundy, Sullivan wrote the nostalgic and sentimental Haddon Hall then, reunited with W. S. Gilbert, he produced Utopia, Limited. He next returned, with his earlier collaborator F. C. Burnand, with The Chieftain and collaborated for the last time with Gilbert on The Grand Duke. None of these had proved to be more than modestly successful, and Carte's other new pieces for the Savoy in the 1890s had done no better. Following the success of Sullivan's ballet Victoria and Merrie England in 1897, Carte asked Sullivan to work on another new opera for the Savoy.Carte assembled a high quality team for The Beauty Stone, hoping for a hit. J. Comyns Carr had earlier written the text for Henry Irving's grand production of the King Arthur legend, for which Sullivan had provided the incidental music score in 1895. Sullivan had in the past considered the idea of an opera on the same subject and was pleased when Carr offered him a similarly romantic work with a medieval setting. The eponymous beauty stone was a magical item that would transform its holder's appearance but would have unanticipated consequences. Sullivan seemed not to notice that this major element of the plot was simply a variant of the "magic lozenge" plot that Gilbert had so often proposed to the composer, and that he had repeatedly rejected. A. W. Pinero was at the height of his career in 1898, having produced several enduring successes in the 1890s, including The Second Mrs. Tanqueray and The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, and the same year as The Beauty Stone he would produce Trelawny of the 'Wells'. One of the most important, prolific and popular British playwrights, Pinero was later knighted for his services to dramatic authorship. Carr conceived of the basic idea of the libretto, that true beauty is an inner quality. Carr confined himself to writing the lyrics, however, and Pinero was brought in to work out the plot and write the dialogue. Having brought together three such eminent talents, Carte had high expectations, and there was much anticipation in the press.
The Beauty Stone was conceived as a musical drama different in style from the productions that had preceded it at the Savoy Theatre. Sullivan's intention was to create a work halfway between the romantic flights of his grand opera Ivanhoe and the familiar humour of the earlier Savoy operas. The composer, however, soon found that Carr's lyrics were unwieldy and difficult to set to music. In mid-December 1897, he wrote in his diary that his collaborators were difficult; when he asked for changes in the construction of the piece, they refused to make the alterations. He was forced to involve Helen Carte to mediate the disagreements with his collaborators. Even so, Sullivan continued to be disappointed in what he had to work with. In February 1898, he wrote in his diary: "eartbreaking to have to try to make a musical piece out of such badly constructed mess of involved sentences." Nevertheless, after working further with Carr in March, he was able to work out the key difficulties, and his struggles with the complexity of the lyrics seems to have inspired some of Sullivan's longest melodic lines and interesting musical settings. Rehearsals began early in April 1898.
Moreover, the Savoy was not the right place to produce such a drama, because its audience was used to seeing comic operas focused on wit, humour and Gilbertian satire. To provide them with a mostly dark-toned romantic piece consisting of pseudo-medieval dialogue, lengthy grand-operatic musical numbers and a serious exploration of complex characters turned out to be a grave mistake. In addition, The Beauty Stone is a very long piece - it played for nearly four hours on opening night; several items were cut soon after opening night, but the cuts did not improve matters. At the same time, competition from the new theatrical art form of George Edwardes-style musical comedy produced at other London theatres offered lighthearted entertainment choices to the Savoy audience, with catchy tunes, dancing and witty banter. For a modern audience, however, there is much to admire about The Beauty Stone. Pinero's book, though overly long, contains vivid characters with psychological depth that Sullivan was able to develop more fully than in his shorter comic operas. The complex way in which these characters react to the beauty stone makes this plot device different from the way Gilbert treated his magic lozenges and gave Sullivan a chance to employ rich musical portraits of yearning, despair, love and beauty.
Production, reception and aftermath
The Beauty Stone premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 28 May 1898. Sullivan conducted the premiere, as he always did with his operas. It closed on 16 July 1898 after a run of just 50 performances, making it the least successful of Sullivan's operas. In contrast, the most successful shows that opened in London in 1898 had far longer runs: The Belle of New York ; A Greek Slave ; and A Runaway Girl. The cast of The Beauty Stone included Savoy regulars Walter Passmore, Rosina Brandram, Ruth Vincent, Emmie Owen and Henry Lytton. Some of the music is more challenging than the typical Savoy Opera, and so Sullivan insisted on casting several opera singers, including Covent Garden opera soprano Pauline Joran as Saida, and the size of the chorus was increased. Choreography was by John D'Auban. Costumes by Percy Anderson and sets by William Telbin, Jr. were universally praised by the critics.Savoy Theatre audiences were not enthusiastic about the piece. "The Savoy is in the minds of the public so essentially identified with a light after-dinner entertainment that romantic opera is not to the taste of its patrons". Reviewers noted that the opera was "mounted with the artistic finish, completeness, and liberality customary at this popular theatre. Sir Arthur has had to deal with a subject differing widely from those which, at the Savoy, his dainty and humorous muse is so thoroughly identified. This, and the inferiority of the lyrics … must be taken into account. … Speaking for ourselves, we confess freely to disappointment." They found it too long, disjointed and dull, disliked the pseudo-archaic dialogue and nearly all condemned the lyrics. They noted its lack of humour and the satire for which Savoy pieces had been famous. A few critics found much to like in the story, and many praised most of the cast and Sullivan's music, or at least some of it.
In The Saturday Review, Max Beerbohm wrote, "Lyrics written by gentlemen who have had no experience in the difficult art of writing words for music, and sung in a theatre which one associates with Mr. W. S. Gilbert, are not likely to charm the most amenable audience." He said of Carr and Pinero, "I am sure that the indisputable dulness of their Beauty Stone comes, mainly, from their pseudo-archaic manner." Pinero commented, many years later: "I doubt whether any of us had much faith in The Beauty Stone, as likely to attract the Savoy public in large numbers, but we – Sullivan, Carr and I – did what we wanted to do; and, though it doesn't pay the butcher's bill, there lies the artist's reward." Sullivan disagreed, hoping "that one day The Beauty Stone may be revived, with about half the libretto ruthlessly cut away".
The opera was revived on tour by the Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1901–02, which drastically cut the dialogue, reducing the running time of the piece to about 2½ hours. When Sullivan died, his autograph scores passed to his nephew, Herbert Sullivan, and then to Herbert's widow. After her death, the collection was broken up and sold by auction at Sotheby's in London on 13 June 1966. Some items were sold for considerable sums, but the manuscript of The Beauty Stone sold for a mere £110 to a dealer and eventually was acquired by the collector Colin Prestige. Upon his death, almost forty years later, the manuscript was bequeathed to Oriel College, Oxford, and in December 2005 scholars from the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society were able to examine the manuscript, along with other Sullivan autograph manuscripts. They discovered, at the back of The Beauty Stone, the items that had been cut after opening night, which were completely unknown to that time. Since then, these items have been performed in concert and included on the 2013 Chandos recording, although no full professional productions of the opera have been given since Carl Rosa's over a century ago.