page_title: Frederic Clay
section_title: Early career
hierarchical_section_title: Frederic Clay / Life and career / Early career
caption_attribution_description: The original description, on the next page of the newspaper, reads: SCENE FROM "AGES AGO." The new entertainment, entitled "Ages Ago," recently produced at the Royal Gallery of Illustration, does much credit both to Mr. and Mrs. German Reed, and to Mr. W. S. Gilbert, the author. It is one of those rare works that contain an idea. There is but one scene, but that comprehends many possible evolutions. It is of a picture gallery in an old castle, called Glen Cockaleekie, now in possession of Sir Ebenezer Tare, a rich tallow-chandler, who is troubled on account of the attentions paid to his daughter by a young gentleman of good family, but poor. The old housekeeper, however, has taken the lovers under her protection, and endeavours to possess them with the superstitions by which she is herself so powerfully influenced. These relate to the original owners of the castle. Its first tenant, it seems, bound himself to a fiend by a contract requiring that the castle should have a legitimate owner but once in a hundred years. The time has now arrived for such an event to happen, and that very night it is expected. All the inmates of the castle have retired to rest, and now the supernatural work begins. The pictures on the walls become animated in their frames, and the persons they represent descend and become performers in a living drama. Lady Maud de Bohun leads off the action, suddenly recollecting that she was painted, for a few marks, by a Messer Leonardo da Vinci, a young promising artist, and wondering at the changes made in the castle since her death. Sir Aubrey de Beaupré, also, who was painted by Titian, shares in the conversation, and apologisres for one of his hands being out of drawing, it having been restored by an R.A. Next, Lord Carnaby Poppytop, painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, steps from the wall, and, with a cough, interferes with the dialogue. Becoming rivals for the lady they fight; when Dame Cherry Maybud descends, and reproves Lord Carnaby for wishing to marry his grandmother. This part of the scene is the subject of our illustration. Ultimately the portraits return to their frames, and the love affair of the introductory scene is amicably settled in the concluding one.
context_page_description: Frederic Emes Clay was an English composer known principally for his music written for the stage. Clay, a great friend of Arthur Sullivan's, wrote four comic operas with W. S. Gilbert and introduced the two men.
  While working as a civil servant in the Treasury department, Clay began composing seriously in the early 1860s. His first big success was Ages Ago, a short comic opera with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert, for the small Gallery of Illustration. Other pieces with Gilbert and others followed, and Clay turned to composing full-time after his father died in 1873. That year, he composed a successful opera-bouffe version of The Black Crook for the Alhambra Theatre. Clay's last piece with Gilbert was Princess Toto. He also composed two cantatas. His last two works were both successful operas composed in 1883, The Merry Duchess and The Golden Ring. He then suffered a stroke that paralysed him at age 44.
context_section_description: Clay wrote his first short play for the amateur stage in 1859 called 'The Pirate's Isle, and completed the short comic play Out of Sight the following year. His first professionally produced piece was an opera entitled Court and Cottage, with a libretto by Tom Taylor, which was produced at Covent Garden Theatre in 1862.  In 1865, for the same theatre, he composed another opera, the unsuccessful Constance (1865), with a libretto by Thomas William Robertson. With B. C. Stephenson, he wrote three pieces played by amateurs: The Pirate's Isle, Out of Sight and The Bold Recruit (1868), and with W. S. Gilbert he wrote Ages Ago (1869) for Thomas German Reed's Gallery of Illustration. This piece ran for 350 performances and was revived several times. Clay introduced Gilbert to Arthur Sullivan during a rehearsal for Ages Ago.  The Bold Recruit was revived at a benefit by German Reed at the Gallery of Illustration in 1870 as a companion piece to Ages Ago.
  These were followed by The Gentleman in Black (1870, also with Gilbert), In Possession (1871, also for German Reed), Happy Arcadia (1872, with Gilbert), Oriana (1873, with a libretto by James Albery), Green Old Age and Cattarina (both 1874, with libretti by Robert Reece), Princess Toto (1875, the last collaboration between Clay and Gilbert), and Don Quixote (1876).  Ages Ago (a one-act piece) and Princess Toto (a three-act comic opera) are considered to be among Clay's most tuneful and attractive works.  The Times wrote that the music of Princess Toto "is probably surpassed by no modern English work of the kind for gaiety and melodious charm."
  Clay also composed part of the score for the spectacle Babil and Bijou (1872, also for German Reed) and the successful opera-bouffe version of The Black Crook (1873 based on the same source material as the earlier American musical of the same name and starring Kate Santley), both of which were produced with success at the Alhambra Theatre.  He also furnished incidental music for a revival of Twelfth Night.
caption: A scene from Ages Ago in The Illustrated London News
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