Utopia

It's just beginning to sink in now: it's 2011, the big Gilbert year! I have reserved the next month to try and catch up with all the things I've been promising people I will write in order to help launch the book.

Years ago, I urged people on Savoynet (the G&S online discussion group) to prepare for 2011, because this is the right time for a Gilbert revival. Well, in a strange way perhaps the world is ready. I've done my little bit, and am still doing it. Not as well as another, more perfect person would do it, but still, I've done what I can.

The big obstacle is what it always was: Gilbert's own reputation. His name is compromised by association with English complacency and bourgeoiserie. His rage, his savagery, his contempt for the values of his own society, have been dulled and submerged. Something must be done to bring them to the surface again.


I think of the late G&S opera Utopia, Limited. The harshest satire that he wrote with Sullivan. An attack on Thatcherite politics ninety years before Thatcher. An opera without a plot; if it had been written in the 1970s it would have been called a concept musical, but as it is, the fact that it has no consistent through line is considered a flaw. But the simple fact is that it is a satire, of the kind that we are constantly told Gilbert was incapable of writing; and satires usually have structural problems.


I will quote one passage from the end of the opera. The island of Utopia has been "reformed" by the introduction of English ideas. But this has resulted in disaster, because the professions that rely on misery and pain--doctors, soldiers, lawyers, and so on--have been thrown out of work. And it is realised that the last plank of reform has been omitted:


"Government by Party! Introduce that great and glorious element--at once the bulwark and foundation of England's greatness--and all will be well! No political measures will endure, because one Party will assuredly undo all that the other party has done; and while grouse is to be shot, and foxes worried to death, the legislative action of the country will be at a standstill. Then there will be sickness in plenty, endless lawsuits, crowded jails, interminable confusion in the Army and Navy, and, in short, general and unexampled prosperity!"

And they still say Gilbert wasn't a satirist! Well, it must be true, because they say it. Still, I'm very glad to know that in this centenary year, with the Conservatives in power, Utopia is going to be professionally performed at the Buxton Festival. If it's done right, it will explode like a bomb.