Not currently on display at the V&A

Design for a stage cloth for Princess Ida by James Wade, 1954, possibly redrawn by Peter Goffin, 1955

Set Design
1954 (designed)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Princess Ida, or Castle Adamant by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan was originally produced at the Savoy Theatre under the management of Richard D’Oyly Carte on Saturday 5th January 1884 until Saturday 16th August 1884, and from Monday 15th September until Thursday 9th October 1884.

Agreeing on a new subject after Iolanthe proved difficult. Gilbert suggested his ‘magic lozenge’ plot in which characters magically transformed themselves by swallowing one - the idea he had used for his 1873 play The Wicked World. Sullivan wanted a story of more human interest, and eventually agreed on Princess Ida, Gilbert’s ‘respectful perversion’ of Tennyson’s 1847 narrative poem The Princess that Gilbert had previously dramatized in The Princess, staged at the Olympic Theatre in January 1870. Set in Castle Adamant where Princess Ida, the daughter of the crotchety King Gama, runs a women’s college, Princess Ida was a satire on women’s education, a controversial subject in 1847 when Queen’s College opened in London, and in 1870, the year after the establishment of Girton College, Cambridge. The only Gilbert and Sullivan three act opera, and the only one in blank verse, it contains some of Sullivan’s most operatic music but did not enjoy the lasting success of their previous works and was not revived in London during D’Oyly Carte’s management.

This designs by James Wade was for a brand new production of Princess Ida that Rupert D'Oyly opened at The Savoy Theatre on 27th September 1954. Since the previous costumes and sets had been destroyed in an air raid that hit the D’Oyly Carte’s south London store during the Second World War, Carte commissioned new designs from James Wade. A review in The Sphere, 2nd October 1954 praised the ‘romantic and faery beauty’ of the new designs that echoed: ‘the fabulous dreamlike poem by Tennyson on which the opera is based’.

In 1955 the designer Peter Goffin was brought in to create a ‘unit set’ – a framework on which the sets for all the operas could be easily mounted and changed for touring purposes. Wade's Princess Ida set was one of those that Goffin adapted to fit the unit set, along with sets for The Yeoman of the Guard, Patience and The Mikado that Goffin himself redesigned in 1938, 1957 and 1958 respectively. In 1955 Goffin redesigned the costume for Princess Ida to be worn by Muriel Harding on the tour, possibly because she did not like the original designed by James Wade and worn by Victoria Sladen at the Savoy Theatre in 1954.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleDesign for a stage cloth for <i>Princess Ida</i> by James Wade, 1954, possibly redrawn by Peter Goffin, 1955 (generic title)
Materials and techniques
Watercolour, gouache and pencil on card
Brief description
Design by James Wade for a stage cloth in the D'Oyly Carte production of Princess Ida,Savoy Theatre, 27th September 1954, possibly redrawn by Peter Goffin in 1955
Physical description
Design by James Wade for a stage cloth for a production of Princess Ida1954, possibly redrawn by Peter Goffin, 1955
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
Princess Ida, or Castle Adamant by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan was originally produced at the Savoy Theatre under the management of Richard D’Oyly Carte on Saturday 5th January 1884 until Saturday 16th August 1884, and from Monday 15th September until Thursday 9th October 1884.

Agreeing on a new subject after Iolanthe proved difficult. Gilbert suggested his ‘magic lozenge’ plot in which characters magically transformed themselves by swallowing one - the idea he had used for his 1873 play The Wicked World. Sullivan wanted a story of more human interest, and eventually agreed on Princess Ida, Gilbert’s ‘respectful perversion’ of Tennyson’s 1847 narrative poem The Princess that Gilbert had previously dramatized in The Princess, staged at the Olympic Theatre in January 1870. Set in Castle Adamant where Princess Ida, the daughter of the crotchety King Gama, runs a women’s college, Princess Ida was a satire on women’s education, a controversial subject in 1847 when Queen’s College opened in London, and in 1870, the year after the establishment of Girton College, Cambridge. The only Gilbert and Sullivan three act opera, and the only one in blank verse, it contains some of Sullivan’s most operatic music but did not enjoy the lasting success of their previous works and was not revived in London during D’Oyly Carte’s management.

This designs by James Wade was for a brand new production of Princess Ida that Rupert D'Oyly opened at The Savoy Theatre on 27th September 1954. Since the previous costumes and sets had been destroyed in an air raid that hit the D’Oyly Carte’s south London store during the Second World War, Carte commissioned new designs from James Wade. A review in The Sphere, 2nd October 1954 praised the ‘romantic and faery beauty’ of the new designs that echoed: ‘the fabulous dreamlike poem by Tennyson on which the opera is based’.

In 1955 the designer Peter Goffin was brought in to create a ‘unit set’ – a framework on which the sets for all the operas could be easily mounted and changed for touring purposes. Wade's Princess Ida set was one of those that Goffin adapted to fit the unit set, along with sets for The Yeoman of the Guard, Patience and The Mikado that Goffin himself redesigned in 1938, 1957 and 1958 respectively. In 1955 Goffin redesigned the costume for Princess Ida to be worn by Muriel Harding on the tour, possibly because she did not like the original designed by James Wade and worn by Victoria Sladen at the Savoy Theatre in 1954.
Collection
Accession number
S.3821-2015

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Record createdMarch 30, 2016
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