GENESIS

Three weeks after première of Princess Ida, Sullivan wrote D'Oyly Carte that he would compose no more operas for the Savoy. He wrote to Gilbert that: "I have come to the end of my capability in that class of piece. My tunes are in danger of becoming mere repetitions of my former pieces, my concerted movements are getting to possess a strong family likeness". He wished to set "a story of human interest and probability". His health was bad. He had also just received a knighthood and some suggest he felt he must live up to it with more serious work. He decided to write a substantial opera and began work on Ivanhoe.

However, he and Gilbert had a contract which said Carte could ask for something new in six months. Gilbert worked on a libretto about a magic lozenge which could change people into those they were portraying. Sullivan did not like it. He wanted: "... a story of human interest and probability ... and where, if the situation were a tender or dramatic one, the words would be of a similar character. There would then be a feeling of reality about it". Gilbert suggested Sullivan use someone else's libretto but Sullivan refused to consider this.

An often cited event is reported as Gilbert's inspiration for a new opera set in Japan. Supposedly he owned a Japanese ceremonial sword which was proudly displayed on his wall. One day, it fell and gave him the idea. Unfortunately, the story is probably apocryphal. Gilbert himself did not repeat story. After the opening he said:

I cannot give you a good reason for our ... piece being laid in Japan. It has seemed to us that to lay the scene in Japan afforded scope for picturesque treatment, scenery and costume, and I think that the idea of a chief magistrate, who is king, judge and actual executioner in one, and yet would not hurt a worm, may perhaps please the public.

In truth, in 1884, a Japanese exhibition had been opened Knightsbridge, London, by a Japanese businessman. It was compete with a full-scale, working village with authentic houses, a Buddhist temple, and Japanese inhabitants. Crowds of Londoners attended, intrigued by the, to them, exotic customs. It was destroyed by fire a few months after opening but was rebuilt, complete with a pool and a concert hall, finally closing in 1887.

Cellier's book tells the story.

Just at that time a company of Japanese had arrived in England and set up a little village of their own in Knightsbridge. Beneath the shadow of the Cavalry Barracks the quaint little people squatted and stalked, proud and unconscious of the contrast between their own diminutive forms and those of the Royal Horse Guards across the road. By their strange arts and devices and manner of life, these chosen representatives of a remote race soon attracted all London. Society hastened to be Japanned, just a few years ago Society had been aestheticized. The Lily*, after a brief reign, had been deposed; it was now the turn of the Chrysanthemum to usurp the rightful throne of the English Rose.

Gilbert attended the exhibition, was fascinated by all that he saw, and The Mikado was born. It may even be that he acquired the sword after attending the exhibition. He did later show it, saying: "This is the sword of a Japanese executioner! You will observe that it is a double-handled sword, with a grip admitting of two distinct applications of strength".

The Mikado is the only one of Gilbert and Sullivan's operas with no other known source. Gilbert did read up on ancient Japanese history, but there is no connection with real persons or events. Cellier again:

Figuratively, all these notabilities may have been portrayed on lacquer-trays, screens, plates, or vases, but none of them had ever lived in the flesh before they came to life at the Savoy Theatre. No Emperor from the founder of the Empire to the present could by the greatest stretch of imagination be taken as the prototype of the Mikado we see in the town of Titipu. On the other hand, there are frequent veiled references to British types and institutions.

Gilbert did consider setting the story in Nagasaki, the scene of Madama Butterfly, but decided on the fictional site of Titipu. When he had finished, he took a draft of the libretto to Sullivan and read it aloud. The composer laughed all the way through, and the new work was born.

*The Lily is a reference to Oscar Wilde, with his practice of carrying a lily. He had already been parodied by Gilbert with the character of Bunthorne in Patience who also carried a lily. Indeed, the admiration of the aesthetes for Japanese artifacts helped stir national interest in that culture.

PREPARATION
As was their usual practice, Sullivan first composed the big numbers, beginning with Three Little Maids from School. Meanwhile, once the cast was set, Gilbert started on the dialogue, both spoken and recitative. By the time rehearsals began, the entire piece was set in his mind, even to the inflections of the words. Still, he constantly made changes as he deemed necessary, rewriting it eleven times. The rehearsals were much more complicated than was usual for his operas. A Japanese male dancer and a tea-girl were engaged to teach company the correct make-up, postures, little running steps, and methods of opening and snapping a fan. Their help was acknowledged in the program.

Cellier once more:

To begin with, one of the most essential qualifications of Savoy actors and actresses was that of physical grace; the poise of each limb, the elegant sway and easy motion of the figure, the noble dignity of action which distinguished the English stage. All this had to be undone again [for The Mikado].

The Geisha, or Tea-girl, was charming and a very able instructress, although she knew only two words of English — "Sixpence, please", that being the price of a cup of tea as served by her at Knightsbridge. To her was committed the task of teaching our ladies Japanese deportment, how to walk or run or dance in tiny steps, with toes turned in, as gracefully as possible; how to spread and snap the fan either in wrath, delight, or homage, and how to giggle behind it. [She] also taught them the art of "make-up" touching the features, the eyes, and the hair. ... Our Japanese friends often expressed the wish that they could become as English in appearance as their pupils had become Japanesey [sic]. The ladies were better pupils than the men.

No expense was sparred on the costumes. Many were made of real Japanese silk purchased at the house of Liberty of London or in Paris. Katisha's costume was actually genuine and 200 years old; the Mikado's was an authentic replica of the historic Mikado's. Koko's sword was six feet long. They purchased some antique armor but it was too heavy and too small. There were problems. The men were very upset when they found they could not wear the corsets they felt necessary to support their voices; with the corsets the costumes would not hang properly. The women were shocked to find that Japanese ladies did not wear underwear and special 'combinations' were designed to protect their modesty.

The stage set was up-to-date and accurate. The Mikado's face was fashioned after those of former Mikados with eyebrows shaved off and huge false ones painted on the forehead.

During rehearsals, Gilbert was a strict but not a harsh taskmaster, impatient but not a bully. He knew what he wanted! Actors could be fined for inserting their own business without Gilbert's approval. When George Grossmith, the first Ko-Ko, once justified a gag by saying he got a big laugh, Gilbert said, "So you would if you sat on a pork pie". (Eventually, Grossmith's nerves were so shattered by the rehearsals that he deadened them with drugs.) When, at the final dress rehearsal, Gilbert suddenly announced that he did not like the Mikado's aria and tried to omit it, the members of the chorus were able to convinced him to put it back. As rehearsals grew frantic and time started to run out, Hamilton Clarke was brought in to score the overture from Sullivan's notes. (For more on Gilbert as a director see his biography. )

RECEPTION
Although there were rumors Gilbert and Sullivan's new opera was set in Japan, the actual subject had successfully been kept secret. The opening night was a stunning success; there were seven encores, and The Mikado continued for 672 performances to capacity audiences. The songs were sung everywhere. One critic even compared it to Dante's Divine Comedy! Soon plagiarists began to copy it, especially in the United States. However, authorized productions in New York beat out the copiers. On one evening in 1886 there were as many as 170 separate performances across the United States and, at another point, D'Oyly Carte had five companies playing at once. Characters were used in advertisements. In Buffalo New York, a man invented YumYum ice cream; the sales were so good he used the profits to found the Statler hotel chain.

At first there were mild complaints from the Japanese about the way the Mikado was portrayed, but they soon passed. Later, the Lord Chamberlain withdrew performances during a visit by a Japanese prince in 1907. A furious Gilbert said: "The Mikado of the opera was an imaginary monarch of a remote period and cannot by any exercise of ingenuity be taken to be a slap on an existing institution". The newspapers pointed out that it had been performed in Japan, and that a Japanese prince had seen it in London in 1886 and had not objected. G.K. Chesterton compared it to Swift's Gulliver's Travels:

Gilbert pursued and persecuted the evils of modern England till they had literally not a leg to stand on, exactly as Swift did. ... I doubt if there is a single joke in the whole play that fits the Japanese. But all the jokes in the play fit the English. Yet it is the solid and comic fact that The Mikado was actually forbidden in England for the first time, because it was a satire on Japan. ... About England Pooh-bah is something more than a satire; he is the truth.

The Mikado is still the only Gilbert and Sullivan opera to achieve world-wide acceptance and the only one known in Norway where the opera singer Kirsten Flagstad remembered learning all the parts as a child.

LATER PRODUCTIONS
Once D'Oyly Carte's copyright ran out, others became free to impose their own interpretations on the piece. A 1920s Berlin version had Katisha arriving in an automobile, Nanki Poo doing the Charleston, and Yum Yum bathing nude while singing The sun whose rays. There have been two swing or 'hot' Mikados, one in Chicago and one on Broadway with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson as the Mikado. A 1960s United States television production had Groucho Marks as KoKo, and Sterling Holloway as Pooh-Bah.

Although The Mikado is possibly the most popular opera of all time, some producers today shy away from what they perceive as a racist work which, if performed as written, might disturb modern audiences with its "offensive portrayals of people of color ... [and] ethnic and racial bigotry". They sometimes remove it from its Japanese setting altogether.

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