Sounds on CD VGS 241

This is an abridged recording and companion film by Gilbert & Sullivan For All, a G&S touring company founded by former D'Oyly Carte stars Donald Adams and Thomas Round. Most of the principals are former Company members. John Cartier was John Reed's understudy for many years. Wakeham played small parts in his D'Oyly Carte career (including Antonio and Annibale on the 1961 recording). Humphreys played various soprano and mezzo roles with D'Oyly Carte in the mid-sixties, but never recorded any of them. Ann Hood was a star soprano, but here turns her talents to a mezzo part.

The Gondoliers is the one G&S opera without a true bass part (Richard Temple, the creator of most of the bass parts, having retired from the original D'Oyly Carte Company after Yeomen). In his D'Oyly Carte career, Gondoliers was always a night off for Donald Adams. Indeed, since Round had already retired from the Company, he and Adams gave G&S For All performances on the nights the Company was playing the opera. In this recording, he plays Don Alhambra, a part Adams never took with D'Oyly Carte.

This is one of the more appealing entries in the G&S For All series. The chance to see Donald Adams in an unfamiliar role is part of the allure. Perhaps, too, because the opera is short on plot, it suffers less from abridgement. The recent video transfer from Musical Collectables is about the best that that organization has put out to date.