Ever since its first appearance at the tail-end of 1889, The Gondoliers or The King of Barataria has held its place among the more engagingly operatic of the Savoy Operas. Vocally demanding on the one hand, it is a model of its kind, which to some extent also harks back to Gilbert and Sullivan’s earlier essays in burlesque. Arranged in two acts and set appealingly against a circa-1750 Venetian backdrop, it was the last great success of its creators before their famous quarrel. Following chronologically on the heels of Ruddigore (1887) and Yeomen of the Guard (1888), it was given its first airing on 7th December 1889 in London at the Savoy, where it enjoyed a healthy initial run of 554 performances. It also ran, for a time concurrently, another 103 on Broadway and while, like its predecessor The Mikado, it met with a more short-lived success as Der Gondoliere in both Vienna and Berlin, in Australia, under the auspices of J.C. Williamson’s company, it was to prove, both in its first production and in subsequent revivals spanning several decades, as firm a favourite as previously in England.

 

Among the most frequently recorded of all the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, in both complete and abridged selections during the pre-1925 acoustic period and for the first time electrically, by HMV, in 1927, its solos have remained staples in the concert repertoires of, particularly, sopranos and tenors. In December 1968, after the G&S copyrights were relaxed, the work was revived by Scottish Opera and later re-assumed by Sadler’s Wells (1984) and, more recently still, toured by the reformed D’Oyly Carte companies. It has consistently been welcomed by Savoyards as "a good sing"; while in diverse ways the entire opera is a departure from earlier G&S works, its innovative opening scene, a through-composed fifteen-minute operatic ensemble sequence shorn of dialogue, establishes the pattern for what is to follow.