page_title: The Grand Duke
section_title: Original production and reception
hierarchical_section_title: The Grand Duke / Background / Original production and reception
caption_attribution_description: Grossmith attempts to cheer up D'Oyly Carte after the failure of the last Gilbert and Sullivan opera, The Grand Duke
context_page_description: The Grand Duke; or, The Statutory Duel, is the final Savoy Opera written by librettist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan, their fourteenth and last opera together. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 March 1896, and ran for 123 performances. Despite a successful opening night, the production had a relatively short run and was the partnership's only financial failure, and the two men never worked together again. In recent decades, the opera has been revived professionally, first in the US and then in the UK.
  In The Grand Duke, Gilbert and Sullivan come full circle, back to the theme of their first collaboration, Thespis: a troupe of actors taking political power. The plot hinges on the mis-interpretation of a 100-year-old law regarding statutory duels. The baffled leading man of the troupe, Ludwig, spearheads the rebellion against the hypochondriac, miserly Grand Duke and becomes engaged to four different women before the plot is resolved. The frugality and phoniness of the wealthy classes and the nobility is lampooned and, as in Princess Ida, The Mikado, The Gondoliers, and Utopia, Limited, the foreign setting emboldens Gilbert to use some particularly pointed satire.
context_section_description: The opera premiered on 7 March 1896, and Sullivan conducted the orchestra, as he always did on opening nights. Costumes were by Percy Anderson. The opening night was a decided success, and the critics praised Gilbert's direction, Pálmay's singing and acting, Walter Passmore as Rudolph, and the cast in general. There were some reservations, however.  The Times's review of the opening night's performance said:
  The Grand Duke is not by any means another Mikado, and, though it is far from being the least attractive of the series, signs are not wanting that the rich vein which the collaborators and their various followers have worked for so many years is at last dangerously near exhaustion.  This time the libretto is very conspicuously inferior to the music.  There are still a number of excellent songs, but the dialogue seems to have lost much of its crispness, the turning-point of what plot there is requires considerable intellectual application before it can be thoroughly grasped, and some of the jests are beaten out terribly thin.
  The reviewer stated that the jokes might be funnier if the dialogue between them were "compressed".  The Manchester Guardian concurred: "Mr. Gilbert's tendency to over-elaboration has nowhere shown itself so obtrusively....  Mr. Gilbert has introduced too many whimsical ideas which practically bear no relation to the story proper".  Although the audience greeted the new piece enthusiastically, neither partner was satisfied.  Sullivan wrote in his diary, "Parts of it dragged a little – dialogue too redundant but success great and genuine I think....  Thank God opera is finished & out."  Gilbert wrote to his friend, Mrs. Bram Stoker: "I'm not at all a proud Mother, and I never want to see this ugly misshapen little brat again."
  After the opening night, Sullivan left to recuperate in Monte Carlo.  Gilbert reacted to the reviews by making cuts in the opera.  These included three songs in Act II, and commentators have questioned the wisdom of these particular cuts, especially the Baroness's drinking song and the Prince's roulette song.  The Grand Duke closed after 123 performances on 11 July 1896, Gilbert and Sullivan's only financial failure.  It toured the British provinces for a year and was produced in Germany on 20 May 1896 at the Unter den Linden Theatre in Berlin and on a D'Oyly Carte tour of South Africa the same year.  After this, it disappeared from the professional repertory, although Gilbert considered reviving it in 1909.
caption: Grossmith comforts Carte after failure of The Grand Duke
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