The Grand Duke was the last of the Savoy operas by Gilbert and Sullivan. The plot hinges on the misinterpretation of a 100 year-old law regarding statutory duels, decided by drawing cards. The baffled central character, Ludwig, becomes engaged to four different women before the plot is resolved. Titles: Won't It Be A Pretty Wedding?; By The Mystic Regulation; Were I A King In Very Truth; How Would I Play This Part; My Goodness Me! What Shall I Do?; Ten Minutes Since I Met A Chap; About A Century Since; Strange The Views Some People Hold; Now Take A Card And Gaily Sing; The Good Grand Duke; A Pattern To Professors; As O'er Our Penny Roll We Sing; When You Find You're A Broken-Down Critter; Come Hither, All You People; Oh, A Monarch Who Boasts Intellectual Graces; Ah, Pity Me, My Comrades True; Oh, Listen To Me, Dear; The Die Is Cast; For This Will Be A Jolly Court; As Before You We Defile; Your Loyalty Our Ducal Heart-String Touches; Yes, Ludwig And His Julia Are Mated; Take Care Of Him—He's Much Too Good To Live; Now Julia, Come, Consider It From; Your Highness, There's A Party At The Door; Now Away To The Wedding We Go; So Ends My Dream; If The Light Of Love's Lingering Ember; Come, Bumpers—Aye, Ever-So-Many; Why, Who Is This Approaching?; The Prince Of Monte Carlo; His Highness We Know Not; We're Rigged Out In Magnificent Array; Take My Advice—When Deep In Debt; Hurrah! Now Away To The Wedding; Well, You're A Pretty Kind Of Fellow; Happy Couples, Lightly Treading.
Author
British playwright and lyricist Sir William Schwenck Gilbert wrote a series of comic operas, including Her Majesty's Ship Pinafore (1878) and The Pirates of Penzance (1879), with composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. This English dramatist, librettist, poet, and illustrator in collaboration with this composer produced fourteen comic operas, which include The Mikado , one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre. Opera companies, repertory companies, schools and community theatre groups throughout and beyond the English-speaking world continue to perform regularly these operas as well as most of their other Savoy operas. From these works, lines, such as "short, sharp shock", "What, never? Well, hardly ever!", and "Let the punishment fit the crime," form common phrases of the English language. Gilbert also wrote the Bab Ballads , an extensive collection of light verse, which his own comical drawings accompany. His creative output included more than 75 plays and libretti, numerous stories, poems, lyrics and various other comic and serious pieces. His plays and realistic style of stage direction inspired other dramatists, including Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. According to The Cambridge History of English and American Literature , the "lyrical facility" of Gilbert "and his mastery of metre raised the poetical quality of comic opera to a position that it had never reached before and has not reached since."
