H.M.S. Pinafore
Costume Design
1878 (designed)
1878 (designed)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
HMS Pinafore, or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan was produced at the Opera Comique Theatre under the management of the Comedy Opera Company, on Saturday 25th May 1878 until 24 December and from Saturday 1st until Thursday 20th February 1879.
Delighted with The Sorcerer, D’Oyly Carte commissioned a new work from Gilbert and Sullivan in December 1877. Britain was a seafaring nation, and Gilbert’s new libretto satirised the popular nautical melodramas of his youth such as Douglas Jerrold’s Black Eye’d Susan. Gilbert had featured nautical folk and language in his Bab Ballads, and developed them in H.M.S. Pinafore, a shipboard opera that opened in May 1878 featuring the considerate Captain Corcoran, his gallant crew, the dastardly Dick Deadeye, the First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Joseph Porter (a thinly-veiled portrait of the bookseller turned politician W.H. Smith), his sisters, cousins and aunts, and Buttercup the Bumboat woman.
After a slow start due to a summer heatwave, the opera was a hit by August after Sullivan included its sparkling tunes in a Covent Garden concert. Angered by a host of unauthorised American productions starting with one in Boston in November 1878, Carte planned its first authorised American production which opened the following year at New York’s Fifth Avenue Theatre in December 1879, with Sullivan conducting.
Faustin was the pseudonym of the artist Faustin Betbeder (1814-ca.1914) born in Soissons, France. A friend of the artist Gustave Dore and a pupil of the cartoonist Alfred Grevin, who also produced set and costume designs for popular theatre, Faustin became known in France as a caricature artist of unflattering caricatures of personalities in the Franco-Prussian war. He moved to Britain after the war where he set up a printing business and where some of his caricatures were printed in The London Figaro in 1874-1874. He also produced costume designs for theatres including the Alhambra and the Lyceum, as well as for the Opera Comique, where Gilbert would have known his work.
Delighted with The Sorcerer, D’Oyly Carte commissioned a new work from Gilbert and Sullivan in December 1877. Britain was a seafaring nation, and Gilbert’s new libretto satirised the popular nautical melodramas of his youth such as Douglas Jerrold’s Black Eye’d Susan. Gilbert had featured nautical folk and language in his Bab Ballads, and developed them in H.M.S. Pinafore, a shipboard opera that opened in May 1878 featuring the considerate Captain Corcoran, his gallant crew, the dastardly Dick Deadeye, the First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Joseph Porter (a thinly-veiled portrait of the bookseller turned politician W.H. Smith), his sisters, cousins and aunts, and Buttercup the Bumboat woman.
After a slow start due to a summer heatwave, the opera was a hit by August after Sullivan included its sparkling tunes in a Covent Garden concert. Angered by a host of unauthorised American productions starting with one in Boston in November 1878, Carte planned its first authorised American production which opened the following year at New York’s Fifth Avenue Theatre in December 1879, with Sullivan conducting.
Faustin was the pseudonym of the artist Faustin Betbeder (1814-ca.1914) born in Soissons, France. A friend of the artist Gustave Dore and a pupil of the cartoonist Alfred Grevin, who also produced set and costume designs for popular theatre, Faustin became known in France as a caricature artist of unflattering caricatures of personalities in the Franco-Prussian war. He moved to Britain after the war where he set up a printing business and where some of his caricatures were printed in The London Figaro in 1874-1874. He also produced costume designs for theatres including the Alhambra and the Lyceum, as well as for the Opera Comique, where Gilbert would have known his work.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | H.M.S. Pinafore (generic title) |
| Materials and techniques | watercolour and bodycolour over pencil on board |
| Brief description | Costume design by Faustin for a Female Chorus Member from original production of H.M.S. Pinafore, Opera Comique, 1878 |
| Physical description | Watercolour and bodycolour over pencil on board. The design features a female figure wearing a white and blue dress. The bodice features blue bows and pale blue cuffs. She is wearing a yellow hat with a blue trim and bow. |
| Dimensions |
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| Credit line | Given by Dame Bridget D'Oyly Carte. The V&A wishes to acknowledge the generous support given by The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, which facilitated the cataloguing of the D’Oyly Carte Archive designs in 2015/16. |
| Summary | HMS Pinafore, or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan was produced at the Opera Comique Theatre under the management of the Comedy Opera Company, on Saturday 25th May 1878 until 24 December and from Saturday 1st until Thursday 20th February 1879. Delighted with The Sorcerer, D’Oyly Carte commissioned a new work from Gilbert and Sullivan in December 1877. Britain was a seafaring nation, and Gilbert’s new libretto satirised the popular nautical melodramas of his youth such as Douglas Jerrold’s Black Eye’d Susan. Gilbert had featured nautical folk and language in his Bab Ballads, and developed them in H.M.S. Pinafore, a shipboard opera that opened in May 1878 featuring the considerate Captain Corcoran, his gallant crew, the dastardly Dick Deadeye, the First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Joseph Porter (a thinly-veiled portrait of the bookseller turned politician W.H. Smith), his sisters, cousins and aunts, and Buttercup the Bumboat woman. After a slow start due to a summer heatwave, the opera was a hit by August after Sullivan included its sparkling tunes in a Covent Garden concert. Angered by a host of unauthorised American productions starting with one in Boston in November 1878, Carte planned its first authorised American production which opened the following year at New York’s Fifth Avenue Theatre in December 1879, with Sullivan conducting. Faustin was the pseudonym of the artist Faustin Betbeder (1814-ca.1914) born in Soissons, France. A friend of the artist Gustave Dore and a pupil of the cartoonist Alfred Grevin, who also produced set and costume designs for popular theatre, Faustin became known in France as a caricature artist of unflattering caricatures of personalities in the Franco-Prussian war. He moved to Britain after the war where he set up a printing business and where some of his caricatures were printed in The London Figaro in 1874-1874. He also produced costume designs for theatres including the Alhambra and the Lyceum, as well as for the Opera Comique, where Gilbert would have known his work. |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | S.2682-2015 |
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| Record created | February 4, 2016 |
| Record URL |
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