Old Favorites in Manhattan

The Mikado (book & lyrics by Sir W. S. Gilbert; music by Sir Arthur Sullivan; produced by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company) brought to Broadway, for the first time since 1939, England's famed Gilbert & Sullivan troupe, the D'Oyly Carters. It also brought to Broadway, possibly for the first time since 1939, those dedicated spirits, those Haute-Savoyards, for whom G. & S. is not a production but a rite. For seven weeks, with a new opera every Monday, they might chirrup, gurgle, hum, keep an eye out for heresy.

After nine years, it was inevitable that there should be changes among the D'Oyly Carters: new faces; new but in no way newfangled scenery; an orchestra that seemed a bit lacking in volume and verve. But for the most part things remained wonderfully unchanged: this highborn troupe whose ancestors ushered half the Savoy operas into the world has long subdued individual talent to group traditions. At moments their work might seem more traditional than talented; but the D'Oyly Carters remained the most stylish and polished of G. & S. performers, the most grandly operatic as they trilled, the most augustly pompous as they marched, the most blatantly patrician as they tapped their fans.

Only conceivable democrat among them was the Ko-Ko, Martyn Green. Green's plebeian shenanigans evoked, as of yore, the loudest applause, the greatest lifting of eyebrows. His adroitness, especially his scissors-like legwork, was beyond dispute. But whether all his mugging, prancing and capering was entirely seemly--or entirely successful--continued to be disputed.

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