NOTES

Paintings: There was a terrific interest in things Japanese in London at the time, and many collected these things, including the American painter Whistler.

Nanki-Poo: None of the names of the characters are Japanese. They are pure nonsense. The Mikado was the title for the Emperor of Japan but there never was a town of Titipu.

Répertoire: This piece starts with a recitative (Gentlemen I pray you), followed by an aria (A wandering minstrel I). (This is an opportunity to contrast aria, recitative and spoken dialogue.) Note how each verse of the aria illustrates a different type of song: march, sea shanty (or chanty), sentimental ballad. What does the music tell us? There is a complicated reference to Shakespeare's Hamlet. In Act III Scene 4 line 102, Hamlet calls his uncle Claudius "A king of shreds and patches". He is comparing him to a mock king such as one in rags in a play put on by peasants. In actuality Nanki-Poo is a real prince.

Head: In a version of the story he wrote for children, Gilbert explained the logic of all of the above as follows:

1) All criminals sentenced to death must be executed in the order in which they are sentenced. 2) Ko-Ko was next in line. 3) If we appoint him Lord High Executioner he cannot behead anybody else until he has beheaded himself. 4) But a man cannot behead himself. 5) Therefore he can never behead anybody else, and we are all quite safe and can do exactly as we please.

Pooh-Bah: One of characters in the Bab Ballads King Borria Bungalee Boo is named "Haughty Pish-Tush-Pooh-Bah". Pooh-Bah, essentially a new creation of Gilbert's, was "born sneering" and is a symbol of pride, avarice and corruption. His name has entered the English language as a person of his type and position. Gilbert writes of him as follows:

Pooh-Bah was one of the most remarkable characters in ancient or modern history. He was very conceited and eager for money. His family tree was fifteen miles long. When all other officers of state resigned rather than serve under Koko he accepted all their offices. His enormous salary which resulted was an indignity because he would be serving as a paid minion, but he made the sacrifice to his family pride.

His job titles are very British, especially the Archbishop of Titipu. Note partitularly how he can trace his ancestry to "primordial slime", i.e. to long before Adam.

List: Note: Productions often change the list to reflect local situations. This could lead to an assignment for students to create their own lists. Nisi Prius: A writ directed to a [county] sheriff commanding him to provide a jury at the Court of Westminster on a certain day unless the judges of assize previously come to the county from which the jury is to be returned.

Ko-Ko is the nearest to a clown of all Gilbert's creations; a 'blithe Charlie Chaplin". However, his portral is frequently subjected to excesses.

School: Vocabulary: ladies seminary, genius tutelary, trammels.

Marine Parade: The Marine Parade is actually a boulevard along the sea but Yum-Yum seems to think it is a musical instrument.

Pitti-Sing: Gilbert tells us that Pitti-Sing and Pooh-Bah eventually fall in love. At the end of the opera they frequently sing together.

Katisha is an example of Gilbert's treatment of older women. With the exception of Little Butterfly in Pinafore, they are always ugly and not very nice.

Fled: He calls his father the "Lucius Junius Brutus of his race". Lucius Junius Brutus was a Roman who was involved in overthrowing Tarquin and became the first Consul of the Roman Republic (509 BC). When his sons plotted to restore Tarquin, he had them executed. Why does he make this comparison?

Capital: Note the play on the word capital which can mean 'very good' or 'deserving death'.

Apostrophe: Another play on words. Apostrophe is not just the puctuation word; it also means that a speaker interrupts himself and addresses others.

Patter songs are a staple in Italian comic opera including Cinderella. The object is to have "The greatest number of words uttered in the shortest possible time". This example is extremely difficult. For one thing they are usually solos; here three singers have to keep together. Also they are much easier to sing clearly in Italian with its many vowels than in English with all its important consonants which must be pronounced for the words to be understood. There are a number of patter songs in Gilbert and Sullivan, however, as Despard in Ruddigore sings: "This particular rapid, unintelligible patter isn't generally heard, and if it is it doesn't matter".

The Happy Dispatch is a British term for hara-kiri (often mispelled hari-kari) which translates as 'belly-cutting' While the term 'hara-kiri is often used by Westerners, the correct Japanese term for this form of suicide is seppuku. It is the honorable, ritual way for a Samurai to kill himself when disgraced. It wouldn't be used by a member of the royal family. Women also had their own ritual which involved cutting the throat.

The long finale is another Italian opera buffa tradition. It is always in the middle of the opera. (In Cinderella the Act I finale is 20 minutes long. The one at the end of the opera only 10.) The Act I finale of The Mikado is about 14 minutes long compared with only 1:30 for the one at the end of the opera. A finale, no matter its length, consists of solos, duets, ensembles, choruses etc. but there is never any recitative. Furthermore, the story still develops. Note all that happens here and with no dialog.

Make-up was one of the 'quaint' Japanese customs. No respectable Victorian English girl would be caught doing such a thing.

A madrigal is a song for four voices singing four different lines. The style dates from Elizabethan times. By tradition it is unaccompanied, but Sullivan provides a light accompaniment here to help the singers stay on pitch.

Burial alive is not a Japanese custom. It is one of the many 'errors' with respect to Japan committed by Gilbert

Here's a how-de-do concerns another one of the dilemmas faced by the characters in The Mikado.

Although some have stated that Miya sama is the Japanese National Anthem, this is not correct. The words and music are those to which the Imperial Army marched to battle in 1868 when the last Shogun was finally overthrown.

Some claim the phrase to "make the punishment fit the crime" seems to be original with Gilbert, but like many of his other phrases, it dates at least as far back as the Roman orator Cicero in his De Legibus.

Execution: When the opera was written the Mikado was indeed a fatherly figure. The Meiji restoration (1868) had brought back direct imperial role, but Emperor Mutsuhito (r. 1867-1912) introduced constitutional monarchy modeled on that of Great Britain. A snickersnee is a knife used in fighting. Gilbert makes it a sword. Japanese never wore pig-tails. This is another error of Gilbert's part, but they are frequently shown in productions of The Mikado.

Abroad: Originally he says he has gone to Knightsbridge which was the site of the Japanese exhibition which inspired the opera. This is frequently changed to a site with local implications.

Ko-Ko remarks: "Is this a time for airy persiflage?" Airy Persiflage is the name of the Lyric Opera's newsletter. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, persiflage is "light banter or raillery; a frivolous manner of treating any subject".

Bird: A tom-tit is a male titmouse, a small bird. Note that birds do not in actually perspire. This song was long milked for comic effect until Martyn Green, the great twentieth century Ko-Ko, 'sang it in a small, grave baritone voice which beautifully revealed the chiseled elegance of the vocal line'. The bird sings "Willow". The willow has long represented the loss of a lover, and Gilbert is referring back to other representations of this. John Heywood (ca. 1497-1580) in the Ballad of the Green Willow writes: "From love won to love lost where lovers be led, O desperate dolour! The lover is dead; For all the green willow is my garland". Robert Herrick (1591-1674): "A willow garland thou did'st send perfum'd, last day, to me, Which did but only this portend — I was forsook by thee". Shakespeare echoes Heywood in Othello when Desdemona sings the song her mother's maid sang when her lover deserted her with the refrain: "Sing all a green willow".

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