page_title: Sydney Granville
section_title: Early career – lyric baritone
hierarchical_section_title: Sydney Granville / Life and career / Early career – lyric baritone
caption_attribution_description: English: D'Oyly Carte Opera Company publicity photograph, 1920, showing from left Sydney Granville as the Usher and Leo Sheffield as the Learned Judge. Reproduced from Mander, Raymond and Joe Mitchenson. A Picture History of Gilbert and Sullivan, Vista Books, London, 1962, p. 96
context_page_description: Sydney Granville was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
  After early theatrical work in musical comedy, straight plays and grand opera, he joined the D'Oyly Carte company, at first in the chorus, then in lyric baritone roles and finally in the comic bass-baritone parts of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. With brief breaks when he performed for other managements, Granville was with D'Oyly Carte from 1907 to 1942.
context_section_description: Granville joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company chorus in 1907, soon understudying the role of Lord Mountararat in Iolanthe at the Savoy Theatre in London. When the season ended, he toured with the company in the chorus and played the small role of Selworthy in the curtain raiser After All!. The next season, at the Savoy, he played John Lloyd in Fenn and Faraday's A Welsh Sunset, given as a curtain raiser to H.M.S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance, and he understudied Henry Lytton in the role of Dick Deadeye in Pinafore.
  On tour with D'Oyly Carte from 1908 to 1914, Granville played a variety of Gilbert and Sullivan roles, including the Counsel to the Plaintiff in Trial by Jury, Boatswain in Pinafore, Samuel in The Pirates of Penzance, Colonel Calverley in Patience, Strephon in Iolanthe, Arac in Princess Ida, Pish-Tush in The Mikado, the Lieutenant of the Tower in The Yeomen of the Guard, and Luiz in The Gondoliers.
  In March 1914, Granville left the company. He played in pantomime as the Demon Killjoy in Cinderella at the London Palladium. He rejoined D'Oyly Carte, during its 1915–16 tour, playing only Strephon and Luiz in a nine-opera repertoire. The Manchester Guardian commented on his neglect, "Mr. Sydney Granville, who has been heard too little, was a delightful Strephon." In the next season, he lost the role of Strephon to Leo Sheffield when the latter rejoined the company. Granville left D'Oyly Carte for the second time in 1917.
  Following the death of the veteran D'Oyly Carte performer Fred Billington in November 1917, Sheffield took on most of his bass-baritone roles.  A year later, Granville returned to play the lyric baritone roles that Sheffield had earlier played. These roles were the Counsel, Boatswain, Samuel, Strephon, Florian in Princess Ida, Pish-Tush, the Lieutenant, and Luiz, later swapping the Counsel for the Usher in Trial, adding the Colonel and later Grosvenor in Patience, and swapping Luiz for Giuseppe in The Gondoliers. In 1920, the critic Neville Cardus wrote of him, "As fine a Savoyard as any in the company, Mr. Sydney Granville acted and sang capitally. He has a rare instinct for the gauntness of the English ballad manner which is the secret of Gilbert's lyrical style ... also he never loses the suspicion of parody which so often underlines Sullivan's tunes." In 1921 Granville added to his repertoire the role of Cox in Cox and Box, and by 1924, he had given up the smaller roles of Samuel and the Lieutenant. In 1925 he transferred to D'Oyly Carte's smaller touring company, playing Colonel Calverley in Patience, Mountararat in Iolanthe, the title role in The Mikado, and Sir Roderic Murgatroyd in Ruddigore.
caption: Granville (left) as the Usher in Trial by Jury, 1920, with Leo Sheffield as the Learned Judge
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