Search - Arthur Sullivan, Isidore Godfrey, Alan Styler :: The Gondoliers

Good 1950 D'Oyly Carte Company Performance

L. E. Cantrell | Vancouver, British Columbia Canada | 02/13/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is the 1950 recording of The Gondoliers performed by the mid-century incarnation of Gilbert and Sullivan's original performing troupe, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. The conductor was the venerable Isadore Godfrey, who must have devoted at least a half century of his life to the G&S comic operas. The performance was recorded in good mono sound for its time. Although a little compressed by DDD-era standards, its sound is perfectly listenable for all but those delicate souls who simply must have digital or die.D'Oyly Carte in the 1940s and 50s fielded the century's best-balanced team of singer-actors, led by the incomparable Martyn Green in the patter part of the Duke of Plaza-Toro. Ella Halman was the regular heavy contralto and just right for the Duchess of Plaza-Toro. Leonard Osborne was a tenor lacking in polish when considered solely as a singer, but far and away the best tenor-actor ever recorded in G&S. His robust sound makes most of his recorded successors sound downright anemic. The rest of the large ensemble range from more than adequate to very good, indeed. And all of them project marvelous British stage diction--whether portraying Spanish nobility or Venetian peasants. The chorus, as always with D'Oyly Carte, is excellent in sound, precise in speech and tidy in rhythm.The performance was recorded without spoken dialogue. Die-hard G&S fans are free to regard this fact as a damning criticism or as a welcome relief, as they see fit.As usual for Naxos, the written documentation accompanying the discs is inadequate and of questionable accuracy.This is a recording for the G&S newbie who wants an inexpensive set that is worth listening to or for the true fan who wants to hear a first-rate cast getting Gilbert and Sullivan right."