title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's infrequent serious pieces during the 1880s included two cantatas, "The Martyr of Antioch" (1880) and "The Golden Legend" (1886), his most popular choral work. He also wrote incidental music for West End productions of several Shakespeare plays, and held conducting and academic appointments. Sullivan's only grand opera, "Ivanhoe", though initially successful in 1891, has rarely been revived. In his last decade Sullivan continued to compose comic operas with various librettists and wrote other major and minor works. He died at the age of 58, regarded as Britain's foremost composer. His comic opera style served as a model for generations of musical theatre composers that followed, and his music is still frequently performed, recorded and pastiched.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan was born in Lambeth, London, the younger of the two children, both boys, of Thomas Sullivan (1805–1866) and his wife, Mary Clementina "née" Coghlan (1811–1882). His father was a military bandmaster, clarinettist and music teacher, born in Ireland and raised in Chelsea, London; his mother was English born, of Irish and Italian descent. Thomas Sullivan was based from 1845 to 1857 at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, where he was the bandmaster and taught music privately to supplement his income. Young Arthur became proficient with many of the instruments in the band and composed an anthem, "By the Waters of Babylon", when he was eight. He later recalled:


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: While recognising the boy's obvious talent, his father knew the insecurity of a musical career and discouraged him from pursuing it. Sullivan studied at a private school in Bayswater. In 1854 he persuaded his parents and the headmaster to allow him to apply for membership in the choir of the Chapel Royal. Despite concerns that, at nearly 12 years of age, Sullivan was too old to give much service as a treble before his voice broke, he was accepted and soon became a soloist. By 1856, he was promoted to "first boy". Even at this age, his health was delicate, and he was easily fatigued.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan flourished under the training of the Reverend Thomas Helmore, Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, and began to write anthems and songs. Helmore encouraged his compositional talent and arranged for one of his pieces, "O Israel", to be published in 1855, his first published work. Helmore enlisted Sullivan's assistance in creating harmonisations for a volume of "The Hymnal Noted" and arranged for the boy's compositions to be performed; one anthem was performed at the Chapel Royal in St James's Palace under the direction of Sir George Smart.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: In 1856 the Royal Academy of Music awarded the first Mendelssohn Scholarship to the 14-year-old Sullivan, granting him a year's training at the academy. His principal teacher there was John Goss, whose own teacher, Thomas Attwood, had been a pupil of Mozart. He studied piano with William Sterndale Bennett (the future head of the academy) and Arthur O'Leary. During this first year at the academy Sullivan continued to sing solos with the Chapel Royal, which provided a small amount of spending money.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's scholarship was extended to a second year, and in 1858, in what his biographer Arthur Jacobs calls an "extraordinary gesture of confidence", the scholarship committee extended his grant for a third year so that he could study in Germany, at the Leipzig Conservatoire. There, Sullivan studied composition with Julius Rietz and Carl Reinecke, counterpoint with Moritz Hauptmann and Ernst Richter, and the piano with Louis Plaidy and Ignaz Moscheles. He was trained in Mendelssohn's ideas and techniques but was also exposed to a variety of styles, including those of Schubert, Verdi, Bach and Wagner. Visiting a synagogue, he was so struck by some of the cadences and progressions of the music that thirty years later he could recall them for use in his grand opera, "Ivanhoe". He became friendly with the future impresario Carl Rosa and the violinist Joseph Joachim, among others.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: The academy renewed Sullivan's scholarship to allow him a second year of study at Leipzig. For his third and last year there, his father scraped together the money for living expenses, and the conservatoire assisted by waiving its fees. Sullivan's graduation piece, completed in 1861, was a suite of incidental music to Shakespeare's "The Tempest". Revised and expanded, it was performed at the Crystal Palace in 1862, a year after his return to London; "The Musical Times" described it as a sensation. He began building a reputation as England's most promising young composer.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan embarked on his composing career with a series of ambitious works, interspersed with hymns, parlour songs and other light pieces in a more commercial vein. His compositions were not enough to support him financially, and between 1861 and 1872 he worked as a church organist, which he enjoyed; as a music teacher, which he hated and gave up as soon as he could; and as an arranger of vocal scores of popular operas. He took an early opportunity to compose several pieces for royalty in connection with the wedding of the Prince of Wales in 1863.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: With "The Masque at Kenilworth" (Birmingham Festival, 1864), Sullivan began his association with works for voice and orchestra. While an organist at the Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden, he composed his first ballet, "L'Île Enchantée" (1864). His ""Irish" Symphony" and "Cello Concerto" (both 1866) were his only works in their respective genres. In the same year, his Overture in C ("In Memoriam"), commemorating the recent death of his father, was a commission from the Norwich Festival. It achieved considerable popularity. In June 1867 the Philharmonic Society gave the first performance of his overture "Marmion". The reviewer for "The Times" called it "another step in advance on the part of the only composer of any remarkable promise that just at present we can boast." In October, Sullivan travelled with George Grove to Vienna in search of neglected scores by Schubert. They unearthed manuscript copies of symphonies and vocal music, and were particularly elated by their final discovery, the incidental music to "Rosamunde".


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's first attempt at opera, "The Sapphire Necklace" (1863–64) to a libretto by Henry F. Chorley, was not produced and is now lost, except for the overture and two songs that were separately published. His first surviving opera, "Cox and Box" (1866), was written for a private performance. It then received charity performances in London and Manchester, and was later produced at the Gallery of Illustration, where it ran for an extraordinary 264 performances. W. S. Gilbert, writing in "Fun" magazine, pronounced the score superior to F. C. Burnand's libretto. Sullivan and Burnand were soon commissioned by Thomas German Reed for a two-act opera, "The Contrabandista" (1867; revised and expanded as "The Chieftain" in 1894), but it did not do as well. Among Sullivan's early part songs is "The Long Day Closes" (1868). Sullivan's last major work of the 1860s was a short oratorio, "The Prodigal Son", first given in Worcester Cathedral as part of the 1869 Three Choirs Festival to much praise.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's most enduring orchestral work, the "Overture di Ballo", was composed for the Birmingham Festival in 1870. The same year, Sullivan first met the poet and dramatist W. S. Gilbert. In 1871 Sullivan published his only song cycle, "The Window", to words by Tennyson, and he wrote the first of a series of incidental music scores for productions of Shakespeare plays. He also composed a dramatic cantata, "On Shore and Sea", for the opening of the London International Exhibition, and the hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers", with words by Sabine Baring-Gould. The Salvation Army adopted the latter as its favoured processional, and it became Sullivan's best-known hymn.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: At the end of 1871 John Hollingshead, proprietor of London's Gaiety Theatre, commissioned Sullivan to work with Gilbert to create the burlesque-style comic opera "Thespis". Played as a Christmas entertainment, it ran through to Easter 1872, a good run for such a piece. Gilbert and Sullivan then went their separate ways until they collaborated on three parlour ballads in late 1874 and early 1875.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's large-scale works of the early 1870s were the "Festival Te Deum" (Crystal Palace, 1872) and the oratorio "The Light of the World" (Birmingham Festival, 1873). He provided incidental music for productions of "The Merry Wives of Windsor" at the Gaiety in 1874 and "Henry VIII" at the Theatre Royal, Manchester, in 1877. He continued to compose hymns throughout the decade. In 1873 Sullivan contributed songs to Burnand's Christmas "drawing room extravaganza", "The Miller and His Man".


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: In 1875 the manager of the Royalty Theatre, Richard D'Oyly Carte, needed a short piece to fill out a bill with Offenbach's "La Périchole". Carte had conducted Sullivan's "Cox and Box". Remembering that Gilbert had suggested a libretto to him, Carte engaged Sullivan to set it, and the result was the one-act comic opera "Trial by Jury". "Trial", starring Sullivan's brother Fred as the Learned Judge, became a surprise hit, earning glowing praise from the critics and playing for 300 performances over its first few seasons. "The Daily Telegraph" commented that the piece illustrated the composer's "great capacity for dramatic writing of the lighter class", and other reviews emphasised the felicitous combination of Gilbert's words and Sullivan's music. One wrote, "it seems, as in the great Wagnerian operas, as though poem and music had proceeded simultaneously from one and the same brain." A few months later, another Sullivan one-act comic opera opened: "The Zoo", with a libretto by B. C. Stephenson. It was less successful than "Trial", and for the next 15 years Sullivan's sole operatic collaborator was Gilbert; the partners created a further twelve operas together.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan also turned out more than 80 popular songs and parlour ballads, most of them written before the end of the 1870s. His first popular song was "Orpheus with his Lute" (1866), and a well-received part song was "Oh! Hush thee, my Babie" (1867). The best known of his songs is "The Lost Chord" (1877, lyrics by Adelaide Anne Procter), written at the bedside of his brother during Fred's last illness. The sheet music for his best-received songs sold in large numbers and was an important part of his income.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: In this decade, Sullivan's conducting appointments included the Glasgow Choral Union concerts (1875–77) and the Royal Aquarium Theatre, London (1876). In addition to his appointment as Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, of which he was a Fellow, he was appointed as the first Principal of the National Training School for Music in 1876. He accepted the latter post reluctantly, fearing that discharging the duties thoroughly would leave too little time for composing; in this he was correct. He was not effective in the post, and resigned in 1881.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's next collaboration with Gilbert, "The Sorcerer" (1877), ran for 178 performances, a success by the standards of the day, but "H.M.S. Pinafore" (1878), which followed it, turned Gilbert and Sullivan into an international phenomenon. Sullivan composed the bright and cheerful music of "Pinafore" while suffering from excruciating pain from a kidney stone. "Pinafore" ran for 571 performances in London, then the second-longest theatrical run in history, and more than 150 unauthorised productions were quickly mounted in America alone. Among other favourable reviews, "The Times" noted that the opera was an early attempt at the establishment of a "national musical stage" free from risqué French "improprieties" and without the "aid" of Italian and German musical models. "The Times" and several of the other papers agreed that although the piece was entertaining, Sullivan was capable of higher art, and frivolous light opera would hold him back. This criticism would follow Sullivan throughout his career.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: In 1879 Sullivan suggested to a reporter from "The New York Times" the secret of his success with Gilbert: "His ideas are as suggestive for music as they are quaint and laughable. His numbers ... always give me musical ideas." "Pinafore" was followed by "The Pirates of Penzance" in 1879, which opened in New York and then ran in London for 363 performances.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: In 1880 Sullivan was appointed director of the triennial Leeds Music Festival. He had earlier been commissioned to write a sacred choral work for the festival and chose, as its subject, Henry Hart Milman's 1822 dramatic poem based on the life and death of St Margaret of Antioch. "The Martyr of Antioch" was first performed at the Leeds Festival in October 1880. Gilbert adapted the libretto for Sullivan, who, in gratitude, presented his collaborator with an engraved silver cup inscribed "W.S. Gilbert from his friend Arthur Sullivan." Sullivan was not a showy conductor, and some thought him dull and old-fashioned on the podium, but "Martyr" had an enthusiastic reception and was frequently revived. Other critics and performers had favorable reactions to Sullivan's conducting, and he had a busy conducting career in parallel with his composing career, including seven Leeds Festivals among many other appointments. Sullivan invariably conducted the opening nights of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Carte opened the next Gilbert and Sullivan piece, "Patience", in April 1881 at London's Opera Comique, where their past three operas had played. In October, "Patience" transferred to the new, larger, state-of-the-art Savoy Theatre, built with the profits of the previous Gilbert and Sullivan works. The rest of the partnership's collaborations were produced at the Savoy, and are widely known as the "Savoy operas". "Iolanthe" (1882), the first new opera to open at the Savoy, was Gilbert and Sullivan's fourth hit in a row. Sullivan, despite the financial security of writing for the Savoy, increasingly viewed the composition of comic operas as unimportant, beneath his skills, and also repetitious. After "Iolanthe", Sullivan had not intended to write a new work with Gilbert, but he suffered a serious financial loss when his broker went bankrupt in November 1882. Therefore, he concluded that his financial needs obliged him to continue writing Savoy operas. In February 1883, he and Gilbert signed a five-year agreement with Carte, requiring them to produce a new comic opera on six months' notice.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: On 22 May 1883 Sullivan was knighted by Queen Victoria for his "services ... rendered to the promotion of the art of music" in Britain. The musical establishment, and many critics, believed that this should end his career as a composer of comic opera – that a musical knight should not stoop below oratorio or grand opera. Having just signed the five-year agreement, Sullivan suddenly felt trapped. The next opera, "Princess Ida" (1884, the duo's only three-act, blank verse work), had a shorter run than its four predecessors; Sullivan's score was praised. With box office receipts lagging in March 1884, Carte gave the six months' notice, under the partnership contract, requiring a new opera. Sullivan's close friend, the composer Frederic Clay, had recently suffered a career-ending stroke at the age of 45. Sullivan, reflecting on this, on his own long-standing kidney problems, and on his desire to devote himself to more serious music, replied to Carte, "[I]t is impossible for me to do another piece of the character of those already written by Gilbert and myself."


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Gilbert had already started work on a new opera in which the characters fell in love against their wills after taking a magic lozenge. Sullivan wrote on 1 April 1884 that he had "come to the end of my tether" with the operas: "I have been continually keeping down the music in order that not one [syllable] should be lost. ... I should like to set a story of human interest & probability where the humorous words would come in a humorous (not serious) situation, & where, if the situation were a tender or dramatic one the words would be of similar character." In a lengthy exchange of correspondence, Sullivan pronounced Gilbert's plot sketch (particularly the "lozenge" element) unacceptably mechanical, and too similar in both its grotesque "elements of topsyturveydom" and in actual plot to their earlier work, especially "The Sorcerer". He repeatedly requested that Gilbert find a new subject. The impasse was finally resolved on 8 May when Gilbert proposed a plot that did not depend on any supernatural device. The result was Gilbert and Sullivan's most successful work, "The Mikado" (1885). The piece ran for 672 performances, which was the second-longest run for any work of musical theatre, and one of the longest runs of any theatre piece, up to that time.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: In 1886 Sullivan composed his second and last large-scale choral work of the decade. It was a cantata for the Leeds Festival, "The Golden Legend", based on Longfellow's poem of the same name. Apart from the comic operas, this proved to be Sullivan's best received full-length work. It was given hundreds of performances during his lifetime, and at one point he declared a moratorium on its presentation, fearing that it would become over-exposed. Only Handel's "Messiah" was performed more often in Britain in the 1880s and 1890s. It remained in the repertory until about the 1920s, but since then it has seldom been performed; it received its first professional recording in 2001. The musical scholar and conductor David Russell Hulme writes that the work influenced Elgar and Walton.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: "Ruddigore" followed "The Mikado" at the Savoy in 1887. It was profitable, but its nine-month run was disappointing compared with most of the earlier Savoy operas. For their next piece, Gilbert submitted another version of the magic lozenge plot, which Sullivan again rejected. Gilbert finally proposed a comparatively serious opera, to which Sullivan agreed. Although it was not a grand opera, "The Yeomen of the Guard" (1888) provided him with the opportunity to compose his most ambitious stage work to date. As early as 1883 Sullivan had been under pressure from the musical establishment to write a grand opera. In 1885 he told an interviewer, "The opera of the future is a compromise [among the French, German and Italian schools] – a sort of eclectic school, a selection of the merits of each one. I myself will make an attempt to produce a grand opera of this new school. ... Yes, it will be an historical work, and it is the dream of my life." After "The Yeomen of the Guard" opened, Sullivan turned again to Shakespeare, composing incidental music for Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre production of "Macbeth" (1888).


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan wished to produce further serious works with Gilbert. He had collaborated with no other librettist since 1875. But Gilbert felt that the reaction to "The Yeomen of the Guard" had "not been so convincing as to warrant us in assuming that the public want something more earnest still". He proposed instead that Sullivan should go ahead with his plan to write a grand opera, but should continue also to compose comic works for the Savoy. Sullivan was not immediately persuaded. He replied, "I have lost the liking for writing comic opera, and entertain very grave doubts as to my power of doing it." Nevertheless, Sullivan soon commissioned a grand opera libretto from Julian Sturgis (who was recommended by Gilbert), and suggested to Gilbert that he revive an old idea for an opera set in colourful Venice. The comic opera was completed first: "The Gondoliers" (1889) was a piece described by Gervase Hughes as a pinnacle of Sullivan's achievement. It was the last great Gilbert and Sullivan success.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: The relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan suffered its most serious breach in April 1890, during the run of "The Gondoliers", when Gilbert objected to Carte's financial accounts for the production, including a charge to the partnership for the cost of new carpeting for the Savoy Theatre lobby. Gilbert believed that this was a maintenance expense that should be charged to Carte alone. Carte was building a new theatre to present Sullivan's forthcoming grand opera, and Sullivan sided with Carte, going so far as to sign an affidavit that contained erroneous information about old debts of the partnership. Gilbert took legal action against Carte and Sullivan, vowing to write no more for the Savoy, and so the partnership came to an acrimonious end. Sullivan wrote to Gilbert in September 1890 that he was "physically and mentally ill over this wretched business. I have not yet got over the shock of seeing our names coupled ... in hostile antagonism over a few miserable pounds".


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's only grand opera, "Ivanhoe", based on Walter Scott's novel, opened at Carte's new Royal English Opera House on 31 January 1891. Sullivan completed the score too late to meet Carte's planned production date, and costs mounted; Sullivan was required to pay Carte a contractual penalty of £3,000 () for his delay. The production lasted for 155 consecutive performances, an unprecedented run for a grand opera, and earned good notices for its music. Afterwards, Carte was unable to fill the new opera house with other opera productions and sold the theatre. Despite the initial success of "Ivanhoe", some writers blamed it for the failure of the opera house, and it soon passed into obscurity. Herman Klein called the episode "the strangest comingling of success and failure ever chronicled in the history of British lyric enterprise!" Later in 1891 Sullivan composed music for Tennyson's "The Foresters", which ran well at Daly's Theatre in New York in 1892, but failed in London the following year.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan returned to comic opera, but because of the fracture with Gilbert, he and Carte sought other collaborators. Sullivan's next piece was "Haddon Hall" (1892), with a libretto by Sydney Grundy based loosely on the legend of the elopement of Dorothy Vernon with John Manners. Although still comic, the tone and style of the work was considerably more serious and romantic than most of the operas with Gilbert. It ran for 204 performances, and was praised by critics. In 1895 Sullivan once more provided incidental music for the Lyceum, this time for J. Comyns Carr's "".


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: With the aid of an intermediary, Sullivan's music publisher Tom Chappell, the three partners were reunited in 1892. Their next opera, "Utopia, Limited" (1893), ran for 245 performances, barely covering the expenses of the lavish production, although it was the longest run at the Savoy in the 1890s. Sullivan came to disapprove of the leading lady, Nancy McIntosh, and refused to write another piece featuring her; Gilbert insisted that she must appear in his next opera. Instead, Sullivan teamed up again with his old partner, F. C. Burnand. "The Chieftain" (1894), a heavily revised version of their earlier two-act opera, "The Contrabandista", flopped. Gilbert and Sullivan reunited one more time, after McIntosh announced her retirement from the stage, for "The Grand Duke" (1896). It failed, and Sullivan never worked with Gilbert again, although their operas continued to be revived with success at the Savoy.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: In May 1897 Sullivan's full-length ballet, "Victoria and Merrie England", opened at the Alhambra Theatre to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. The work celebrates English history and culture, with the Victorian period as the grand finale. Its six-month run was considered a great achievement. "The Beauty Stone" (1898), with a libretto by Arthur Wing Pinero and J. Comyns Carr, was based on mediaeval morality plays. The collaboration did not go well: Sullivan wrote that Pinero and Comyns Carr were "gifted and brilliant men, with "no" experience in writing for music", and, when he asked for alterations to improve the structure, they refused. The opera, moreover, was too serious for the Savoy audiences' tastes. It was a critical failure and ran for only seven weeks.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: In 1899, to benefit "the wives and children of soldiers and sailors" on active service in the Boer War, Sullivan composed the music of a song, "The Absent-Minded Beggar", to a text by Rudyard Kipling, which became an instant sensation and raised an unprecedented £300,000 () for the fund from performances and the sale of sheet music and related merchandise. In "The Rose of Persia" (1899), Sullivan returned to his comic roots, writing to a libretto by Basil Hood that combined an exotic "Arabian Nights" setting with plot elements of "The Mikado". Sullivan's tuneful score was well received, and the opera proved to be his most successful full-length collaboration apart from those with Gilbert. Another opera with Hood, "The Emerald Isle", quickly went into preparation, but Sullivan died before it was completed. The score was finished by Edward German, and produced in 1901.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's health was never robust – from his thirties his kidney disease often obliged him to conduct sitting down. He died of heart failure, following an attack of bronchitis, at his flat in London on 22 November 1900. His "Te Deum Laudamus", written in expectation of victory in the Boer War, was performed posthumously.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: A monument in the composer's memory featuring a weeping Muse was erected in the Victoria Embankment Gardens in London and is inscribed with Gilbert's words from "The Yeomen of the Guard": "Is life a boon? If so, it must befall that Death, whene'er he call, must call too soon". Sullivan wished to be buried in Brompton Cemetery with his parents and brother, but by order of the Queen he was buried in St Paul's Cathedral. In addition to his knighthood, honours awarded to Sullivan in his lifetime included Doctor in Music, "honoris causa", by the Universities of Cambridge (1876) and Oxford (1879); Chevalier, Légion d'honneur, France (1878); Order of the Medjidie conferred by the Sultan of Turkey (1888); and appointment as a Member of the Fourth Class of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO) in 1897.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's operas have often been adapted, first in the 19th century as dance pieces and in foreign adaptations of the operas themselves. Since then, his music has been made into ballets ("Pineapple Poll" (1951) and "Pirates of Penzance – The Ballet!" (1991)) and musicals ("The Swing Mikado" (1938), "The Hot Mikado" (1939) and "Hot Mikado" (1986), "Hollywood Pinafore" and "Memphis Bound" (both 1945), "The Black Mikado" (1975), etc.). His operas are frequently performed, and also parodied, pastiched, quoted and imitated in comedy routines, advertising, law, film, television, and other popular media. He has been portrayed on screen in "The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan" (1953) and "Topsy-Turvy" (2000). He is celebrated not only for writing the Savoy operas and his other works, but also for his influence on the development of modern American and British musical theatre.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan never married, but he had serious love affairs with several women. The first was with Rachel Scott Russell (1845–1882), the daughter of the engineer John Scott Russell. Sullivan was a frequent visitor at the Scott Russell home in the mid-1860s, and by 1865 the affair was in full bloom. Rachel's parents did not approve of a possible union with a young composer of uncertain financial prospects, but the two continued to see each other covertly. At some point in 1868 Sullivan started a simultaneous (and secret) affair with Rachel's sister Louise (1841–1878). Both relationships ended by early 1869.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's longest love affair was with the American socialite Fanny Ronalds, a woman three years his senior, who had two children. He met her in Paris around 1867, and the affair began in earnest soon after she moved to London in 1871. According to a contemporary description of Ronalds, "Her face was perfectly divine in its loveliness, her features small and exquisitely regular. Her hair was a dark shade of brown – "châtain foncé" [deep chestnut] – and very abundant ... a lovely woman, with the most generous smile one could possibly imagine, and the most beautiful teeth." Sullivan called her "the best amateur singer in London". She often performed Sullivan's songs at her famous Sunday soirées. She became particularly associated with "The Lost Chord", singing it both in private and in public, often with Sullivan accompanying her. When Sullivan died, he left her the autograph manuscript of that song, along with other bequests.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Ronalds was separated from her American husband, but they never divorced. Social conventions of the time compelled Sullivan and Ronalds to keep their relationship private. She apparently became pregnant at least twice and procured abortions in 1882 and 1884. Sullivan had a roving eye, and his diary records the occasional quarrels when Ronalds discovered his other liaisons, but he always returned to her. Around 1889 or 1890 the sexual relationship evidently ended – he started to refer to her in his diary as "Auntie" – but she remained a constant companion for the rest of his life.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: In 1896 the 54-year-old Sullivan proposed marriage to the 22-year-old Violet Beddington (1874–1962), but she refused him.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan loved to spend time in France (both in Paris and on the Riviera), where his acquaintances included European royalty and where the casinos enabled him to indulge his passion for gambling. He enjoyed hosting private dinners and entertainments at his home, often featuring famous singers and well-known actors. In 1865 he was initiated into Freemasonry and was Grand Organist of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1887 during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. Sullivan's talent and native charm gained him the friendship of many, not only in the musical establishment, such as Grove, Chorley and Herman Klein, but also in society circles, such as Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. Sullivan enjoyed playing tennis; according to George Grossmith, "I have seen some bad lawn-tennis players in my time, but I never saw anyone so bad as Arthur Sullivan".


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan was devoted to his parents, particularly his mother. He corresponded regularly with her when away from London, until her death in 1882. Henry Lytton wrote, "I believe there was never a more affectionate tie than that which existed between [Sullivan] and his mother, a very witty old lady, and one who took an exceptional pride in her son's accomplishments." Sullivan was also very fond of his brother Fred, whose acting career he assisted whenever possible, and of Fred's children. After Fred died at the age of 39, leaving his pregnant wife, Charlotte, with seven children under the age of 14, Sullivan visited the family often and became guardian to the children.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: In 1883 Charlotte and six of her children emigrated to Los Angeles, California, leaving the oldest boy, "Bertie", in Sullivan's sole care. Despite his reservations about the move to the United States, Sullivan paid all the costs and gave substantial financial support to the family. A year later, Charlotte died, leaving the children to be raised mostly by her brother. From June to August 1885, after "The Mikado" opened, Sullivan visited the family in Los Angeles and took them on a sightseeing trip of the American west. Throughout the rest of his life, and in his will, he contributed financially to Fred's children, continuing to correspond with them and to be concerned with their education, marriages and financial affairs. Bertie remained with his Uncle Arthur for the rest of the composer's life.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Three of Sullivan's cousins, the daughters of his uncle John Thomas Sullivan, performed with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company: Rose, Jane ("Jennie") and Kate Sullivan, the first two of whom used the stage surname Hervey. Kate was a chorister who defected to the Comedy Opera Company's rival production of "H.M.S. Pinafore", where she had the opportunity to play the leading soprano role, Josephine, in 1879. Jennie was a D'Oyly Carte chorister for fourteen years. Rose took principal roles in many of the companion pieces that played with the Savoy operas.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's works comprise 24 operas, 11 full orchestral works, ten choral works and oratorios, two ballets, one song cycle, incidental music to several plays, more than 70 hymns and anthems, over 80 songs and parlour ballads, and a body of part songs, carols, and piano and chamber pieces. The operatic output spanned his whole career, as did that of his songs and religious music. The solo piano and chamber pieces are mostly from his early years, and are generally in a Mendelssohnian style. With the exception of his "Imperial March", composed for a royal occasion in 1893, the large-scale orchestral concert works also date from early in the composer's career.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Reviewers and scholars often cite Mendelssohn as the most important influence on Sullivan. The music for "The Tempest" and the "Irish Symphony", among other works, was seen by contemporary writers as strikingly Mendelssohnian. Percy Young writes that Sullivan's early affection for Mendelssohn remained evident throughout his composing career. Hughes remarks that although Sullivan emulated Mendelssohn in certain ways he seldom "lapsed into those harmonic clichés which mar some of Mendelssohn's more sentimental effusions". When "The Tempest" music was first presented the "Neue Zeitschrift für Musik" identified Schumann as a stronger influence, and Benedict Taylor, writing in 2017, concurs. In a 2009 study Taylor adds Schubert as another major influence on Sullivan in his orchestral works, although "from the beginning ... there is the peculiar, intangible stamp of Sullivan emerging confidently". Meinhard Saremba notes that from Sullivan's first meeting with Rossini in Paris, in 1862, Rossini's output became a model for Sullivan's comic opera music, "as evidenced in several rhythmic patterns and constructions of long finales".


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: As a young man, Sullivan's conservative musical education led him to follow in the conventions of his predecessors. Later he became more adventurous; Richard Silverman, writing in 2009, points to the influence of Liszt in later works – a harmonic ambiguity and chromaticism – so that by the time of "The Golden Legend" Sullivan had abandoned a home key altogether for the prelude. Sullivan disliked much of Wagner's Musikdrama, but he modelled the overture to "The Yeomen of the Guard" on the prelude of "Die Meistersinger", which he described as "the greatest comic opera ever written". Saremba writes that in works from his middle and later years, Sullivan was inspired by Verdi's example both in details of orchestration, and in "la tinta musical" – the individual musical character of a piece – ranging from the "nautical air of "H.M.S Pinafore"" to "the swift Mediterranean lightness of "The Gondoliers"" and "the bleakness of Torquilstone in "Ivanhoe"".


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan told an interviewer, Arthur Lawrence, "I don't use the piano in composition – that would limit me terribly". Sullivan explained that his process was not to wait for inspiration, but "to dig for it. ... I decide on [the rhythm] before I come to the question of melody. ... I mark out the metre in dots and dashes, and not until I have quite settled on the rhythm do I proceed to actual notation." Sullivan's text setting, compared with that of his 19th century English predecessors or his European contemporaries, was "vastly more sensitive. ... Sullivan's operatic style attempts to create for itself a uniquely English text-music synthesis", and, in addition, by adopting a conservative musical style, he was able to achieve "the clarity to match Gilbert's finely honed wit with musical wit of his own".


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: In composing the Savoy operas, Sullivan wrote the vocal lines of the musical numbers first, and these were given to the actors. He, or an assistant, improvised a piano accompaniment at the early rehearsals; he wrote the orchestrations later, after he had seen what Gilbert's stage business would be. He left the overtures until last and sometimes delegated their composition, based on his outlines, to his assistants, often adding his suggestions or corrections. Those Sullivan wrote himself include "Thespis", "Iolanthe", "Princess Ida", "The Yeomen of the Guard", "The Gondoliers", "The Grand Duke" and probably "Utopia, Limited". Most of the overtures are structured as a pot-pourri of tunes from the operas in three sections: fast, slow and fast. Those for "Iolanthe" and "The Yeomen of the Guard" are written in a modified sonata form.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: "The Musical Times" noted that Sullivan's tunes, at least in the comic operas, appeal to the professional as much as to the layman: his continental contemporaries such as Saint-Saëns and the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick held the Savoy operas in high regard. Hughes writes, "When Sullivan wrote what we call 'a good tune' it was nearly always 'good music' as well. Outside the ranks of the giants there are few other composers of whom the same could be said." Although his melodies sprang from rhythm, some of his themes may have been prompted by his chosen instrumentation or his harmonic techniques.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: In the comic operas, where many numbers are in verse-plus-refrain form, Sullivan shaped his melodies to provide a climax for the verse, capped by an overall climax in the refrain. Hughes cites "If you go in" ("Iolanthe") as an example. He adds that Sullivan rarely reached the same class of excellence in instrumental works, where he had no librettist to feed his imagination. Even with Gilbert, on those occasions when the librettist wrote in unvaried metre, Sullivan often followed suit and produced phrases of simple repetition, such as in "Love Is a Plaintive Song" ("Patience") and "A Man Who Would Woo a Fair Maid" ("The Yeomen of the Guard").


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan preferred to write in major keys, overwhelmingly in the Savoy operas, and even in his serious works. Examples of his rare excursions into minor keys include the long E minor melody in the first movement of the "Irish Symphony", "Go Away, Madam" in the Act I finale of "Iolanthe" (echoing Verdi and Beethoven) and the execution march in the Act I finale of "The Yeomen of the Guard".


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan was trained in the classical style, and contemporary music did not greatly attract him. Harmonically his early works used the conventional formulae of early-nineteenth-century composers including Mendelssohn, Auber, Donizetti, Balfe and Schubert. Hughes comments that harmonic contrast in the Savoy works is enhanced by Sullivan's characteristic modulation between keys, as in "Expressive Glances" ("Princess Ida"), where he negotiates smoothly E major, C sharp minor and C major, or "Then One of Us will Be a Queen" ("The Gondoliers"), where he writes in F major, D flat major and D minor.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: When reproached for using consecutive fifths in "Cox and Box", Sullivan replied "if 5ths turn up it doesn't matter, so long as there is no offence to the ear." Both Hughes and Jacobs in "Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians" comment adversely on Sullivan's overuse of tonic pedals, usually in the bass, which Hughes attributes to "lack of enterprise or even downright laziness". Another Sullivan trademark criticised by Hughes is the repeated use of the chord of the augmented fourth at moments of pathos. In his serious works, Sullivan attempted to avoid harmonic devices associated with the Savoy operas, with the result, according to Hughes, that "The Golden Legend" is a "hotch-potch of harmonic styles".


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: One of Sullivan's best-known devices is what Jacobs terms his "'counterpoint of characters': the presentation by different personages of two seemingly independent tunes which later come together" simultaneously. He was not the first composer to combine themes in this way, but in Jacobs's phrase it became almost "the trademark of Sullivan's operetta style". Sometimes the melodies were for solo voices, as in "I Am So Proud" ("The Mikado"), which combines three melodic lines. Other examples are in choruses, where typically a graceful tune for the women is combined with a robust one for the men. Examples include "When the Foeman Bares his Steel" ("The Pirates of Penzance"), "In a Doleful Train" ("Patience") and "Welcome, Gentry" ("Ruddigore"). In "How Beautifully Blue the Sky" ("The Pirates of Penzance"), one theme is given to the chorus (in 2/4 time) and the other to solo voices (in 3/4).


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan rarely composed fugues. Examples are from the "Epilogue" to "The Golden Legend" and "Victoria and Merrie England". In the Savoy operas, fugal style is reserved for making fun of legal solemnity in "Trial by Jury" and "Iolanthe" (e.g., the Lord Chancellor's leitmotif in the latter). Less formal counterpoint is employed in numbers such as "Brightly Dawns Our Wedding Day" ("The Mikado") and "When the Buds Are Blossoming" ("Ruddigore").


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Hughes concludes his chapter on Sullivan's orchestration: "[I]n this vitally important sector of the composer's art he deserves to rank as a master." Sullivan was a competent player of at least four orchestral instruments (flute, clarinet, trumpet and trombone) and technically a most skilful orchestrator. Though sometimes inclined to indulge in grandiosity when writing for a full symphony orchestra, he was adept in using smaller forces to the maximum effect. Young writes that orchestral players generally like playing Sullivan's music: "Sullivan never asked his players to do what was either uncongenial or impracticable."


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's orchestra for the Savoy operas was typical of the theatre orchestra of his era: 2 flutes (+ piccolo), oboe, 2 clarinets, bassoon, 2 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trombones, timpani, percussion and strings. According to Geoffrey Toye, the number of players in Sullivan's Savoy Theatre orchestras was a "minimum" of 31. Sullivan argued hard for an increase in the pit orchestra's size, and, starting with "The Yeomen of the Guard", the orchestra was augmented with a second bassoon and a second tenor trombone. He generally orchestrated each score at almost the last moment, noting that the accompaniment for an opera had to wait until he saw the staging, so that he could judge how heavily or lightly to orchestrate each part of the music. For his large-scale orchestral pieces, which often employed very large forces, Sullivan added a second oboe part, sometimes double bassoon and bass clarinet, more horns, trumpets, tuba, and occasionally an organ and/or a harp.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: One of the most recognisable features in Sullivan's orchestration is his woodwind scoring. Hughes especially notes Sullivan's clarinet writing, exploiting all registers and colours of the instrument, and his particular fondness for oboe solos. For instance, the "Irish Symphony" contains two long solo oboe passages in succession, and in the Savoy operas there are many shorter examples. In the operas, and also in concert works, another characteristic Sullivan touch is his fondness for pizzicato passages for the string sections. Hughes instances "Kind Sir, You Cannot Have the Heart" ("The Gondoliers"), "Free From his Fetters Grim" ("The Yeomen of the Guard") and "In Vain to Us You Plead" ("Iolanthe").


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Throughout the Savoy operas, and occasionally in other works, Sullivan quotes or imitates well-known themes or parodies the styles of famous composers. On occasion he may have echoed his predecessors unconsciously: Hughes cites a Handelian influence in "Hereupon We're Both Agreed" ("The Yeomen of the Guard"), and Rodney Milnes called "Sighing Softly" in "The Pirates of Penzance" "a song plainly inspired by – and indeed worthy of – Sullivan's hero, Schubert". Edward Greenfield found a theme in the slow movement of the "Irish Symphony" "an outrageous crib" from Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. In early pieces, Sullivan drew on Mendelssohn's style in his music for "The Tempest", Auber's in his "Henry VIII" music and Gounod's in "The Light of the World". The influence of Mendelssohn pervades the fairy music in "Iolanthe". "The Golden Legend" shows the influence of Liszt and Wagner.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan adopted traditional musical forms, such as madrigals in "The Mikado", "Ruddigore" and "The Yeomen of the Guard" and glees in "H.M.S. Pinafore" and "The Mikado", and the Venetian barcarolle in "The Gondoliers". He made use of dance styles to enhance the sense of time or place in various scenes: gavottes in "Ruddigore" and "The Gondoliers"; a country dance in "The Sorcerer"; a nautical hornpipe in "Ruddigore"; and the Spanish cachucha and Italian saltarello and tarantella in "The Gondoliers". Occasionally he drew on influences from further afield. In "The Mikado", he used an old Japanese war song, and his 1882 trip to Egypt inspired musical styles in his later opera "The Rose of Persia".


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Elsewhere, Sullivan wrote undisguised parody. Of the sextet "I Hear the Soft Note" in "Patience", he said to the singers, "I think you will like this. It is Dr Arne and Purcell at their best." In his comic operas, he followed Offenbach's lead in lampooning the idioms of French and Italian opera, such as those of Donizetti, Bellini and Verdi. Examples of his operatic parody include Mabel's aria "Poor Wand'ring One" in "The Pirates of Penzance", the duet "Who Are You, Sir?" from "Cox and Box", and the whispered plans for elopement in "This Very Night" in "H.M.S. Pinafore", parodying the conspirators' choruses in Verdi's "Il trovatore" and "Rigoletto". The mock-jingoistic "He Is an Englishman" in "H.M.S. Pinafore" and choral passages in "The Zoo" satirise patriotic British tunes such as Arne's "Rule, Britannia!". The chorus "With Catlike Tread" from "The Pirates" parodies Verdi's "Anvil Chorus" from "Il trovatore".


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Hughes calls Bouncer's song in "Cox and Box" "a jolly Handelian parody" and notes a strong Handelian flavour to Arac's song in Act III of "Princess Ida". In "A More Humane Mikado", at the words "Bach interwoven with Spohr and Beethoven", the clarinet and bassoon quote the fugue subject of Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G minor. Sullivan sometimes used Wagnerian leitmotifs for both comic and dramatic effect. In "Iolanthe", a distinctive four-note theme is associated with the title character, the Lord Chancellor has a fugal motif, and the Fairy Queen's music parodies that of Wagner heroines such as Brünnhilde. In "The Yeomen of the Guard" the Tower of London is evoked by its own motif. This use of the leitmotif technique is repeated and developed further in "Ivanhoe".


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's critical reputation has undergone extreme changes since the 1860s when critics, struck by his potential, hailed him as the long-awaited great English composer. His incidental music to "The Tempest" was received with acclaim at the Crystal Palace, just before his 20th birthday, in April 1862. "The Athenaeum" commented:


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: His "Irish Symphony" of 1866 won similarly enthusiastic praise, but as Arthur Jacobs notes, "The first rapturous outburst of enthusiasm for Sullivan as an orchestral composer did not last." A comment typical of those that followed him throughout his career was that "Sullivan's unquestionable talent should make him doubly careful not to mistake popular applause for artistic appreciation."


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: When Sullivan turned to comic opera with Gilbert, the serious critics began to express disapproval. The music critic Peter Gammond writes of "misapprehensions and prejudices, delivered to our door by the Victorian firm Musical Snobs Ltd. ... frivolity and high spirits were sincerely seen as elements that could not be exhibited by anyone who was to be admitted to the sanctified society of Art." As early as 1877 "The London Figaro" commented that Sullivan "wilfully throws his opportunity away. ... He possesses all the natural ability to have given us an English opera, and, instead, he affords us a little more-or-less excellent fooling." Few critics denied the excellence of Sullivan's theatre scores. "The Theatre" commented, ""Iolanthe" sustains Dr. Sullivan's reputation as the most spontaneous, fertile, and scholarly composer of comic opera this country has ever produced." Comic opera, no matter how skilfully crafted, was viewed as an intrinsically lower form of art than oratorio. "The Athenaeum's" review of "The Martyr of Antioch" declared: "[I]t is an advantage to have the composer of "H.M.S. Pinafore" occupying himself with a worthier form of art."


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's knighthood in 1883 gave the serious music critics further ammunition. "The Musical Review" of that year observed:


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Even Sullivan's friend George Grove wrote: "Surely the time has come when so able and experienced a master of voice, orchestra, and stage effect – master, too, of so much genuine sentiment – may apply his gifts to a serious opera on some subject of abiding human or natural interest." Sullivan finally redeemed himself in critical eyes with "The Golden Legend" in 1886. "The Observer" hailed it as a "triumph of English art". "The World" called it "one of the greatest creations we have had for many years. Original, bold, inspired, grand in conception, in execution, in treatment, it is a composition which will make an 'epoch' and which will carry the name of its composer higher on the wings of fame and glory. ... The effect of the public performance was unprecedented."


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Hopes for a new departure were expressed in "The Daily Telegraph's" review of "The Yeomen of the Guard" (1888), Sullivan's most serious opera to that point: "[T]he music follows the book to a higher plane, and we have a genuine English opera, forerunner of many others, let us hope, and possibly significant of an advance towards a national lyric stage." Sullivan's only grand opera, "Ivanhoe" (1891), received generally favourable reviews, although J. A. Fuller Maitland, in "The Times", expressed reservations, writing that the opera's "best portions rise so far above anything else that Sir Arthur Sullivan has given to the world, and have such force and dignity, that it is not difficult to forget the drawbacks which may be found in the want of interest in much of the choral writing, and the brevity of the concerted solo parts." Sullivan's 1897 ballet "Victoria and Merrie England" was one of several late pieces that won praise from most critics:


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Although the more solemn members of the musical establishment could not forgive Sullivan for writing music that was both comic and accessible, he was, nevertheless, "the nation's "de facto" composer laureate". His obituary in "The Times" called him England's "most conspicuous composer ... the musician who had such power to charm all classes. ... The critic and the student found new beauties at every fresh hearing. What ... set Sullivan in popular esteem far above all the other English composers of his day was the tunefulness of his music, that quality in it by which ... [it] was immediately recognized as a joyous contribution to the gaiety of life. ... Sullivan’s name stood as a synonym for music in England.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: In the decade after his death, Sullivan's reputation sank considerably among music critics. In 1901 Fuller Maitland took issue with the generally laudatory tone of the obituaries: "Is there anywhere a case quite parallel to that of Sir Arthur Sullivan, who began his career with a work which at once stamped him as a genius, and to the height of which he only rarely attained throughout life? ... It is because such great natural gifts – gifts greater, perhaps, than fell to any English musician since ... Purcell – were so very seldom employed in work worthy of them." Edward Elgar, to whom Sullivan had been particularly kind, rose to Sullivan's defence, branding Fuller Maitland's obituary "the shady side of musical criticism ... that foul unforgettable episode".


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Fuller Maitland's followers, including Ernest Walker, also dismissed Sullivan as "merely the idle singer of an empty evening". As late as 1966 Frank Howes, a music critic for "The Times", condemned Sullivan for a "lack of sustained effort ... a fundamental lack of seriousness towards his art [and] inability to perceive the smugness, the sentimentality and banality of the Mendelssohnian detritus ... to remain content with the flattest and most obvious rhythms, this yielding to a fatal facility, that excludes Sullivan from the ranks of the good composers." Thomas Dunhill wrote in 1928 that Sullivan's "music has suffered in an extraordinary degree from the vigorous attacks which have been made upon it in professional circles. These attacks have succeeded in surrounding the composer with a kind of barricade of prejudice which must be swept away before justice can be done to his genius."


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sir Henry Wood continued to perform Sullivan's serious music. In 1942 Wood presented a Sullivan centenary concert at the Royal Albert Hall, but it was not until the 1960s that Sullivan's music other than the Savoy operas began to be widely revived. In 1960 Hughes published the first full-length book about Sullivan's music "which, while taking note of his weaknesses (which are many) and not hesitating to castigate his lapses from good taste (which were comparatively rare) [attempted] to view them in perspective against the wider background of his sound musicianship." The work of the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society, founded in 1977, and books about Sullivan by musicians such as Young (1971) and Jacobs (1986) contributed to the re-evaluation of Sullivan's serious music. The "Irish Symphony" had its first professional recording in 1968, and many of Sullivan's non-Gilbert works have since been recorded. Scholarly critical editions of an increasing number of Sullivan's works have been published.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: In 1957 a review in "The Times" explained Sullivan's contributions to "the continued vitality of the Savoy operas": "Gilbert's lyrics ... take on extra point and sparkle when set to Sullivan's music. ... [Sullivan, too, is] a delicate wit, whose airs have a precision, a neatness, a grace, and a flowing melody". A 2000 article in "The Musical Times" by Nigel Burton noted the resurgence of Sullivan's reputation beyond the comic operas:


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: On 14 August 1888 George Gouraud introduced Thomas Edison's phonograph to London in a press conference, including the playing of a piano and cornet recording of Sullivan's "The Lost Chord", one of the first recordings of music ever made. At a party on 5 October 1888 given to demonstrate the technology, Sullivan recorded a speech to be sent to Edison, saying, in part: "I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the result of this evening's experiments: astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever. But all the same I think it is the most wonderful thing that I have ever experienced, and I congratulate you with all my heart on this wonderful discovery." These recordings were found in the Edison Library in New Jersey in the 1950s:


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: The first commercial recordings of Sullivan's music, beginning in 1898, were of individual numbers from the Savoy operas. In 1917 the Gramophone Company (HMV) produced the first album of a complete Gilbert and Sullivan opera, "The Mikado", followed by eight more. Electrical recordings of most of the operas issued by HMV and Victor followed from the 1920s, supervised by Rupert D'Oyly Carte. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company continued to produce recordings until 1979. After the copyrights expired, recordings were made by opera companies such as Gilbert and Sullivan for All and Australian Opera, and Sir Malcolm Sargent and Sir Charles Mackerras each conducted audio sets of several Savoy operas. Since 1994, the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival has released professional and amateur CDs and videos of its productions and other Sullivan recordings, and Ohio Light Opera has recorded several of the operas in the 21st century.


title: Arthur Sullivan

text: Sullivan's non-Savoy works were infrequently recorded until the 1960s. A few of his songs were put on disc in the early years of the 20th century, including versions of "The Lost Chord" by Enrico Caruso and Clara Butt. The first of many recordings of the "Overture di Ballo" was made in 1932, conducted by Sargent. The "Irish Symphony" was first recorded in 1968 under Sir Charles Groves. Since then, much of Sullivan's serious music and his operas without Gilbert have been recorded, including the "Cello Concerto" by Julian Lloyd Webber (1986); and "The Rose of Persia" (1999); "The Golden Legend" (2001); "Ivanhoe" (2009); and "The Masque at Kenilworth" and "On Shore and Sea" (2014), conducted by, respectively, Tom Higgins, Ronald Corp, David Lloyd-Jones and Richard Bonynge. In 2017 Chandos Records released an album, "Songs", which includes "The Window" and 35 individual Sullivan songs. Mackerras's Sullivan ballet, "Pineapple Poll", has received many recordings since its first performance in 1951.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: Sylvester Turner (born September 27, 1954) is an American attorney and politician who is serving as the 62nd mayor of Houston, Texas. A member of the Democratic Party, Turner was a member of the Texas House of Representatives from 1989 until 2016. He attended the University of Houston and Harvard Law School. Turner ran for mayor of Houston in 1991, losing in the runoff election to Bob Lanier. He lost again in 2003, coming in third and thus missing the runoff.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: Turner won the 2015 election, defeating Bill King in the runoff by 4,082 votes out of 212,696 votes cast in the closest mayoral election in Houston history by percentage.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: On December 14, 2019, Turner won his second term as mayor over the more conservative Tony Buzbee, 56-44 percent in a turn out of less than 20 percent of registered voters.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: Turner was born on September 27, 1954, in Houston, Texas, as the sixth of nine children, and was raised in the Acres Homes community in northwest Houston by his father, a commercial painter, and his mother, a maid at the Rice Hotel. He was senior class president and valedictorian at Klein High School. At the University of Houston he was Speaker of the Student Senate and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. degree in political science. Turner was a finalist in the Ames Moot Court Competition while obtaining a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School. He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: Upon completing law school Turner joined the law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski. In 1983, he founded his own firm, Barnes & Turner. He has served as an adjunct professor at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law, and as a seminar lecturer at the South Texas College of Law and the University of Houston Law School's Continuing Legal Education Programs. Turner was admitted to practice in the State of Texas, federal District Court for the Southern District Court of Texas and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas, American Bar Association, National Bar Association, Houston Lawyers Association, and the Houston Bar Association. Turner served as an immigration lawyer for many years in Houston.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: In 1984, Turner ran for Harris County Commissioner, Precinct 1 in the Democratic primary, but lost to El Franco Lee. Four years later, he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in House District 139 in Harris County and remained in office through 2014. During that time, Turner ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Houston in 1991 and 2003.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: During his 1991 campaign for Houston mayor, Wayne Dolcefino of KTRK-TV ran an investigative report questioning Turner's involvement in an elaborate insurance fraud scam. The resulting scandal ultimately cost Turner the election. Turner sued Dolcefino and KTRK and was initially awarded a $5.5 million libel settlement that was reduced to $3.25 million by the presiding judge. KTRK appealed the ruling. The Texas Supreme Court overturned the money award on the basis of heightened legal protections which the First Amendment affords to the media. But the court found that both of these specific broadcasts were both false and defamatory.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: Turner served more than 25 years in the Texas House of Representatives, and over the course of his service, he served as a member of the Legislative Budget Board, Vice-Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Chairman of the Subcommittee of Articles 1, 4 & 5 (General Government, Judiciary, Public Safety & Criminal Justice) and the House State Affairs Committee. He also chaired the Texas Legislative Black Caucus and the Greater Houston Area Legislative Delegation. Turner has supported policies to attract doctors to underserved areas, proposed a measure increasing state funding for mental health services in Harris County from $32 million to $200 million, and worked to increase funds for legal aid for poor Texans.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: In February 2020, Turner endorsed Michael Bloomberg in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. However, in March 2020, he switched his endorsement to former vice president Joe Biden.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: In 2016, Turner voiced his support for laws regulating Uber and other ridesharing services to protect public safety.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: In 2015, Turner was named one of the top 10 best members of the Texas House on LGBT issues by Equality Texas with an "A+" rating, after Turner said he had "evolved" on LGBT issues.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: Turner, while running against Bill King in the 2015 Houston mayoral runoff election, stated he is "100 percent" committed to reenacting Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) and attacked Bill King for saying he won't revisit the issue of HERO, along with his support from the Campaign for Houston.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: In 1999, Turner voted to restructure the electric utility industry in Texas to allow customers competition and consumer choice. During his time in the legislature, he has also worked to continue to protect Texans, voting for bills preventing gas companies from cutting off service during freezing temperatures, limiting the amount utility companies could raise rates in order to fund certain projects, such as building electric poles and wires, without first getting approval from state regulators, and authoring legislation that required the Public Utility Commission to conduct cost-benefit analyses of any proposals from utility companies that would add more than $100 million to annual consumer electricity costs. During the 84th session, Turner authored legislation that would prohibit electricity companies from charging customers "minimum usage fees" when they used too little electricity. Turner also voted to allow the Public Utility Commission to issue emergency cease-and-desist orders, without first going to a court, to companies whose actions threaten the state's electricity supply. During the 83rd session, he joined a campaign to encourage low-income Texans to enroll in "LITE-UP Texas", a program "authorized by the Texas Legislature through which participants could reduce the monthly cost of electric service by 82%." In the 84th session, he authored a bill to extend this discount program for another two years, until the end of 2017. He also co-authored a bill to help ensure persons living in multi-family residences are alerted when their electricity bill has not been paid.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: In 2004, he voted against a measure that would have scaled "back benefits for future public school employees and discourag[ed] early retirement." He was also critical of investment managers for the Teachers Retirement Fund for taking over $8.2 million in bonuses while the state was slashing funding for education and the system's investments continued to struggle. In 2011, Turner voted against a measure that would have implemented a 6 percent cut to education funding for all schools in Texas, a move that equated to a $4 billion education funding cut. As a member of the legislature, Turner voted against a measure that would allow school districts to lower their salaries, implement furlough days, and increase student-teacher classroom ratios. He also opposed a corporate tax break that many legislators, in the Texas House of Representatives, believed would hurt public school funding.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: Texas has banned sanctuary cities, but Mayor Turner said that Houston will not assist ICE agents with immigration raids.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, Mayor Turner has received criticism for his decision not to suggest any form of evacuation. He has responded to the criticism by pointing out the logistics of evacuating "6.5 million" people and the deaths and traffic that occurred during the 2005 Hurricane Rita evacuation. Critics have replied stating that 6.5 million people did not have to be evacuated but instead tens of thousands could have been evacuated who were in flood zones or individuals who were most at risk during emergencies could have been evacuated.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: A supporter of the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA), Turner voted against joining the Interstate Health Care Compact, an alternative to traditional ACA participation, and introduced legislation that would expand Medicaid in Texas pursuant to the ACA. Turner warned fellow legislators about the potential backlash from constituents if the state chose not to expand Medicaid, which promised a significant return on the state's investment. One of his major accomplishments in the House was legislation that expanded access to the children's health insurance program, which was passed in 2007. Turner also passed legislation in 2015 that will free up funding for medical trauma care centers, which have not received the full amount of funds designated to be spent specifically on trauma centers. The legislation will bring $25 million to the Greater Houston area over the next two years, including $11 million to Ben Taub and $10 million to the Memorial Hermann. During the 84th Legislature, Turner introduced legislation that would provide care under Medicaid for people with severe and persistent mental illness and who are transitioning from an institution to the community, and who are at risk of institutionalization or re-institutionalization.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: Turner is a regular attendee of various public health programs, including contributions to Covid-19 safety and community-based health care.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: Sylvester Turner has long been an advocate for abortion rights. He voted against a measure requiring doctors to perform a sonogram on women seeking an abortion at least 24 hours before the procedures. He has also fought to protect funding for family planning programs and Planned Parenthood. Turner also voted against a Senate version of a measure that banned abortions after 20 weeks and tightened standards on abortion clinics, and also authored an amendment to the bill that would have required the state to pay the costs abortion clinics would incur on the measure to retrofit facilities so they could be certified as surgical centers. In 2013, the El Paso Times described Turner as a "lion of pro-abortion rights."


title: Sylvester Turner

text: On gun control, Turner opposed measures to limit lawsuits against gun or ammunition manufacturers, allowing concealed handguns on higher education campuses, and rescinding the authority of local governments to ban concealed weapons on public property. He also opposed measures that would reduce the number of training hours required to receive a concealed handgun license. Turner supported a bill that prohibited the use of state funds for the enforcement of federal firearms regulations. He also advocated abandoning the "pick-a-pal system", where judges appoint commissioners who then can pick whoever they want to serve on grand juries.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: As mayor of Houston, Turner has made it a goal of his administration to end chronic homelessness in the city.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: Turner is a member of the Church Without Walls. He was married to Cheryl Turner from 1983 to 1991, and they have one daughter, Ashley Paige Turner.


title: Sylvester Turner

text: In November 2022, Turner disclosed that during the summer he had been diagnosed with bone cancer, for which he had surgery and received six weeks of radiation treatment.


title: The Neverhood

text: The Neverhood (released in Japan as Klaymen Klaymen: The Mystery of Neverhood and referred to in the English version's intro as The Neverhood Chronicles) is a 1996 point-and-click adventure video game developed by The Neverhood, Inc. and published by DreamWorks Interactive for Microsoft Windows. The game follows the adventure of a claymation character named Klaymen as he discovers his origins and his purpose in a world made entirely out of clay. When the game was originally released, it was unique in that all of its animation was done entirely in claymation, including all of the sets, rather than 2- or 3-dimensional computer graphics, like many other games at its time. The gameplay consists mostly of the player guiding the main character Klaymen around and solving puzzles to advance in the game. As the player advances through different areas of the game, there are various video sequences that help advance the plot. In addition to being unique, "The Neverhood" aimed at being quirky and humorous, as is evident by the characters, the music, and the plot sequence of the game. This game was aimed for ages 17 and up.


title: The Neverhood

text: "The Neverhood" is a point-and-click adventure game which emphasizes the solving of puzzles through character action rather than inventory usage. Klaymen must use the available environment in order to advance in the game, with the standard inventory being quasi-absent. There are possible gameovers if the player isn't careful enough, with one where the game cannot be restored from a previous save and must be restarted.


title: The Neverhood

text: The titular Neverhood is a surreal landscape dotted with buildings and other hints of life, all suspended above an endless void. However, the Neverhood itself is strangely deserted, with its only inhabitants being Klaymen (the main protagonist and player character), Willie Trombone (a dim individual who assists Klaymen in his travels), Klogg (the game's antagonist who resembles a warped version of Klaymen), and various fauna that inhabit the Neverhood (most infamously the 'weasels', monstrous, crablike creatures that pursue Klaymen and Willie at certain points in the game). Much of the game's background information is limited to the 'Hall Of Records' which is notorious for its length, taking several minutes to travel from one end of the hall to the other.


title: The Neverhood

text: The game begins with Klaymen waking up in a room and exploring the Neverhood, collecting various discs appearing to contain a disjointed story narrated by Willie (which Klaymen can view through various terminals scattered throughout the land). As Klaymen travels the Neverhood, he occasionally crosses paths with Willie, who agrees to help him in his journey, while Klogg spies on them from afar. Eventually, Klaymen's quest directs him to Klogg's castle, and for this Klaymen enlists the help of Big Robot Bil, a towering automaton and a friend of Willie's.


title: The Neverhood

text: As Bil (with Klaymen and Willie on board) marches to Klogg's castle, Klogg unleashes his guardian, the Clockwork Beast, to intercept Bil. The two giants clash and Bil proves victorious, but as he forces open the castle door for Klaymen to enter, Klogg gravely injures Bil by firing a cannon at him. Klaymen manages to get in, but Bil loses his footing and falls into the void with Willie still inside. Alone in Klogg's castle, Klaymen finds the last of Willie's discs, revealing the full context of his tale; the Neverhood itself is the creation of a godlike being named Hoborg, who created the Neverhood in the hopes of making himself happy. Realizing that he was still alone, Hoborg creates himself a companion by planting a seed into the ground, which grows into Klogg. As Hoborg welcomes Klogg to the Neverhood, the latter tries to take Hoborg's crown, which Hoborg forbids Klogg from doing. Envious, Klogg manages to steal Hoborg's crown, rendering Hoborg inert in the process, and the crown's energies disfigure Klogg. With Hoborg lifeless, any further development of the Neverhood ground to a halt.


title: The Neverhood

text: Having witnessed this, Willie (himself and Bil being creations of Hoborg's brother Ottoborg) discovers that Hoborg was about to plant a seed to create another companion. Willie takes the seed and plants it far away from Klogg, with Willie hoping that whoever grew from the seed would defeat Klogg. That seed in turn grew into Klaymen. The story ends with Willie giving Klaymen the throne room key through the terminal screen, hoping that Klaymen knows what to do once he confronts Klogg. Afterwards, Klaymen manages to enter the throne room, with Klogg and a motionless Hoborg waiting for him. Klogg tries to dissuade Klaymen from reviving Hoborg by tempting him with Hoborg's crown. From here, the player may choose to take up Klogg's offer or take the crown to revive Hoborg. If the player chooses to take the crown for himself, Klogg gloats at his apparent victory, only for the crown to disfigure Klaymen similarly to Klogg. The now-villainous Klaymen overpowers Klogg and declares himself the new ruler of the Neverhood.


title: The Neverhood

text: If the player chooses to revive Hoborg, Klaymen distracts Klogg and manages to put the crown atop Hoborg's head, reviving him. As Hoborg thanks Klaymen, Klogg attempts to ambush them both, only to set off his own cannon which blasts him out of the castle and into the void. Returning to the building where Klaymen first started, Hoborg continues populating the Neverhood and orders a celebration when he is finished. However, Klaymen remains sorrowful over the loss of Willie and Bil, and Hoborg decides to use his powers to save Willie and Bil (to Klaymen's delight), and the game ends with Hoborg telling Klaymen "Man, things are good".


title: The Neverhood

text: Doug TenNapel came up with the idea of a plasticine world in 1988, creating approximately 17 structures. Due to his dissatisfaction with the way David Perry ran Shiny Entertainment, TenNapel left the company in 1995. Two weeks later he announced at E3 that he started his own company, The Neverhood, Inc., which consisted of a number of people who worked on the" Earthworm Jim" game and its sequel. Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks Interactive, which had recently started, needed fresh and unusual projects and TenNapel approached Spielberg with the idea of a claymation game, with Spielberg accepting it for publication. The Neverhood, Inc. made a deal with DreamWorks Interactive and Microsoft, and the game went for development. According to the developers, creating the game's characters and scenery used up over three tons of clay. "The Neverhood" was shown at E3 1996 under the title "The Neverhood: A Curious Wad of Klay Finds His Soul".


title: The Neverhood

text: After a year of work, "The Neverhood" was finally released to the public in 1996. The game elements were shot entirely on beta versions of the Minolta RD-175, making "The Neverhood" the first stop motion production to use consumer digital cameras for professional use.


title: The Neverhood

text: The game's soundtrack was composed and performed by Daniel Amos frontman Terry Scott Taylor and went on to win GMR Magazine's "Best Game Music of the Year" award. Tom Clancy's video game composer Bill Brown called "The Neverhood" Soundtrack, "The Best of any of them (video game soundtracks)."


title: The Neverhood

text: A PlayStation port of the game titled "Klaymen Klaymen": "The Mystery of the Neverhood" was made and released to Japanese audiences only. The game had some minor changes to the PC version such as longer loading times between room to room and the removal of The Hall of Records area. The Japanese release of "Skullmonkeys", in turn, received the appropriate name "Klaymen Klaymen 2".


title: The Neverhood

text: In June 2011, it was announced via Facebook and Twitter that some of the original developers of "The Neverhood" were negotiating for exclusive rights to release the game on modern platforms such as iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android phones, Android tablets and Windows Phones.


title: The Neverhood

text: As official support had ceased, e.g. updates for modern OS and hardware, a fan group created new compatibility fixes in the "Neverhood restoration project" in 2013.


title: The Neverhood

text: On July 21, 2014, ScummVM version 1.7.0 was released by the ScummVM project which added support for "The Neverhood", allowing it to run on many supported platforms including Linux, OS X, Windows and Android OS.


title: The Neverhood

text: According to Leslie Helm of the "Los Angeles Times", "The Neverhood" "won rave reviews" but was commercially unsuccessful. In early 1997, that paper's Greg Miller reported that the game's "sales have been slow and [it] isn't even carried by all of the largest stores, including Target." This came at a time when big-box stores were increasingly important for securing sales, as many specialized video game retailers had closed due to competition with these outside companies. By August 1997, "The Neverhood" had sold 37,000 copies in the United States. Sales in the region had risen to 41,073 copies by April 1999, a figure that CNET Gamecenter's Marc Saltzman called "embarrassing".


title: The Neverhood

text: "The Neverhood"s total sales ultimately surpassed 50,000 copies, and "hundreds of thousands" of OEM copies were purchased by Gateway and pre-installed on its line of computers, according to Mike Dietz. It also received a huge fan base in Russia and Iran as a result of the massive bootleg copying and distribution of pre-installed games on computers.


title: The Neverhood

text: A "Next Generation" critic was pleased with both the visual style (which he said is essentially unprecedented on PC) and the execution of the graphics, but found the game is held back by unexciting puzzles and a generally slow pace. Major Mike of "GamePro" contradicted, "While some of the puzzles are perplexing, none of them have solutions so obscure that you'll burst a blood vessel trying to solve them." However, he agreed that the graphics and the personality of the characters are the highlights of the game. "Weekly Famitsu" gave the PlayStation version a score of 29 out of 40.


title: The Neverhood

text: "The Neverhood" was named the best adventure game of 1996 by "Computer Games Strategy Plus" and CNET Gamecenter, and was nominated for the latter publication's overall "Game of the Year" prize, which ultimately went to "Quake". Gamecenter's editors wrote that it "went beyond anything seen so far in this genre". The game also won the 1996 "Special Award for Artistic Achievement" from "Computer Gaming World", whose staff called it "the coolest-looking game of the year." While "The Neverhood" was nominated for the Computer Game Developers Conference's "Best Animation" Spotlight Award, it lost in this category to "Tomb Raider".


title: The Neverhood

text: "Animation Magazine"s film festival "World Animation Celebration" awarded the game "Best Animation Produced for Game Platforms" in 1997.


title: The Neverhood

text: A sequel to "The Neverhood" was released in 1998 for the PlayStation, entitled "Skullmonkeys". It was not a point-and-click adventure game like the first installment, but rather a platform game.


title: The Neverhood

text: Following the sequel, another Japanese PlayStation game set in the Neverhood universe called "Klaymen Gun-Hockey" was made. A Japan-only sports action game, it was based on the characters of the Neverhood, but was not developed by the designers of the original games; it also did not feature the previous releases' distinctive Claymation design techniques. The game is a variation on air hockey, only played with guns instead of mallets. It was developed and published by Riverhillsoft, the publisher of Japanese releases of the Neverhood series.


title: The Neverhood

text: Klaymen is featured as a secret fighter for the PlayStation game "BoomBots", also developed by The Neverhood, Inc.


title: The Neverhood

text: On March 12, 2013, TenNapel announced that he had partnered with former "Neverhood" and "Earthworm Jim" artists/animators Ed Schofield and Mike Dietz of Pencil Test Studios to develop a "clay and stop-motion animated point and click adventure game". While stating that the game would not be a sequel to "The Neverhood", TenNapel reiterated that the game would consist of his unique art style and sense of humor, and have an original soundtrack by Terry Scott Taylor. The game was titled "Armikrog", which was released on September 30, 2015.


title: The Neverhood

text: In 2012, the authors of the original game "Neverhood" released a musical novel «Return to the Neverhood». The story and soundtrack were written by Terry Scott Taylor, and the illustrations were drawn by Doug TenNapel.


title: The Neverhood

text: On June 25, 2007, "Variety" reported that one of Frederator Films' first projects would be a claymation feature film adaptation based on "The Neverhood". Doug TenNapel, the creator of the video game, signed on to write and direct the film.


title: Rupert Gregson-Williams

text: Rupert Gregson-Williams (born 12 October 1966) is a British composer, conductor, and record producer, best known for his film, video game, and television scores. His filmography includes "Hotel Rwanda", for which he was awarded the European Film composer award, "Hacksaw Ridge", "Wonder Woman", "Aquaman", "Over the Hedge", "Bee Movie", "Abominable", "Back to the Outback", "Made of Honor", "The Holiday", "The Legend of Tarzan", and numerous films by Happy Madison Productions, many of which star Adam Sandler. He composed music for the video game "". His notable works in television include "Veep", "Catch-22" and "The Crown".


title: Rupert Gregson-Williams

text: Educated at choir school, Lancing College, and St John's College, Cambridge, he is the younger brother of film composer Harry Gregson-Williams. He is a member of Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions team of composers.


title: Rupert Gregson-Williams

text: He has received a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award and is a recipient of a BMI Award and a European Film Award.


title: Life simulation game

text: Life simulation games form a subgenre of simulation video games in which the player lives or controls one or more virtual characters (human or otherwise). Such a game can revolve around "individuals and relationships, or it could be a simulation of an ecosystem". Other terms include artificial life game and simulated life game (SLG).


title: Life simulation game

text: Life simulation games are about "maintaining and growing a virtual life", where players are given the power to control the lives of autonomous people or creatures. Artificial life games are related to computer science research in artificial life. But "because they're intended for entertainment rather than research, commercial A-life games implement only a subset of what A-life research investigates." This broad genre includes god games which focus on managing tribal worshipers, as well as artificial pets that focus on one or several animals. It also includes genetic artificial life games, where players manage populations of creatures over several generations.


title: Life simulation game

text: Artificial life games and life simulations find their origins in artificial life research, including "Conway's Game of Life" from 1970. But one of the first commercially viable artificial life games was "Little Computer People" in 1985, a Commodore 64 game that allowed players to type requests to characters living in a virtual house. The game is cited as a little-known forerunner of virtual-life simulator games to follow. One of the earliest dating sims, "Tenshitachi no gogo", was released for the 16-bit NEC PC-9801 computer that same year, though dating sim elements can be found in Sega's earlier "Girl's Garden" in 1984. In 1986, the early biological simulation game "Bird Week" was released.


title: Life simulation game

text: In the mid-1990s, as artificial intelligence programming improved, true AI virtual pets such as "Petz" and "Tamagotchi" began to appear. Around the same time, "Creatures" became "the first full-blown commercial entertainment application of Artificial Life and genetic algorithms". By 2000, "The Sims" refined the formula seen in "Little Computer People" and became the most successful artificial life game created to date. In 2007, the game "Spore" was released, in which the player develops an alien species from the microbial tide pool into an interstellar empire.


title: Life simulation game

text: Digital pets are a subgenre of artificial life game where players train, maintain, and watch a simulated animal. The pets can be simulations of real animals, or fantasy pets. Unlike genetic artificial life games that focus on larger populations of organisms, digital pet games usually allow players to interact with one or a few pets at once. In contrast to artificial life games, digital pets do not usually reproduce or die, although there are exceptions where pets will run away if ignored or mistreated.


title: Life simulation game

text: Digital pets are usually designed to be cute, and act out a range of emotions and behaviors that tell the player how to influence the pet. "This quality of rich intelligence distinguishes artificial pets from other kinds of A-life, in which individuals have simple rules but the population as a whole develops emergent properties". Players are able to tease, groom, and teach the pet, and so they must be able to learn behaviors from the player. However, these behaviors are typically "preprogrammed and are not truly emergent".


title: Life simulation game

text: Game designers try to sustain the player's attention by mixing common behaviors with more rare ones, so the player is motivated to keep playing until they see them. Otherwise, these games often lack a victory condition or challenge, and can be classified as software toys. Games such as "Nintendogs" have been implemented for the Nintendo DS, although there are also simple electronic games that have been implemented on a keychain, such as "Tamagotchi". There are also numerous online pet-raising/virtual pet games, such as Neopets. Other pet life simulation games include online show dog raising games, and show horse raising games.


title: Life simulation game

text: Some artificial life games allow players to manage a population of creatures over several generations, and try to achieve goals for the population as a whole. These games have been called genetic artificial life games, or biological simulations. Players are able to crossbreed creatures, which have a set of genes or descriptors that define the creature's characteristics. Some games also introduce mutations due to random or environmental factors, which can benefit the population as creatures reproduce. These creatures typically have a short life-span, such as the "Creatures" series where organisms can survive from half an hour to well over seven hours. Players are able to watch forces of natural selection shape their population, but can also interact with the population by breeding certain individuals together, by modifying the environment, or by introducing new creatures from their design.


title: Life simulation game

text: Another group of biological simulation games seek to simulate the life of an individual animal whose role the player assumes (rather than simulating an entire ecosystem controlled by the player). These include "Wolf" and its sequel "Lion", the similar "WolfQuest", and the more modest "Odell" educational series.


title: Life simulation game

text: In addition, a large number of games have loose biological or evolutionary themes but do not attempt to reflect closely the reality of either biology or evolution: these include, within the "God game" variety, "" and "Spore", and within the arcade/RPG variety, a multitude of entertainment software products including "Bird Week", "Eco" and "".


title: Life simulation game

text: Social simulation games explore social interactions between multiple artificial lives. In some cases, the player may simply be an observer with no direct control but can influence the environment of the artificial lives, such as by creating and furnishing a house and creating situations for those characters to interact. These games are part of a subcategory of artificial life game sometimes called a virtual dollhouse. "The Sims" is the most notable example of this type of game, and was itself influenced by the 1985 game "Little Computer People".


title: Life simulation game

text: In other games, the player takes a more active role as one character living alongside other artificial ones, engaging in similar life pursuits as to make money or sustain their character while engaging in social interactions with the other characters, typically seeking to gain beneficial relations with all such characters. Several of these fall into the subgenre of farming simulations, where the player-character runs a farm in a rural setting, growing crops and raising livestock to make money to keep their farm going while working to improve relations with the local townspeople. Such games include the "Story of Seasons" and the "Animal Crossing" series, and "Stardew Valley". Dating sims are related to this type of game, but generally where the play-character is seeking a romantic relationship with one or more computer-controlled characters, with such titles often aimed at more mature audiences compared to the typical social simulation game. Dating sims may be more driven by visual novel gameplay elements than typical simulation gameplay.


title: Brazier

text: A brazier () is a container used to burn charcoal or other solid fuel for cooking, heating or cultural rituals. It often takes the form of a metal box or bowl with feet. Its elevation helps circulate air, feeding oxygen to the fire. Braziers have been used since ancient times; the Nimrud brazier dates to at least 824 BC.


title: Brazier

text: The word brazier is mentioned in the Bible. The Hebrew word for brazier is believed to be of Egyptian origin, suggesting that it was imported from Egypt. The lone reference to it in the Bible being the following verse:


title: Brazier

text: Roman Emperor Jovian was poisoned by the fumes from a brazier in his tent in 364, ending the line of Constantine.


title: Brazier

text: Despite risks in burning charcoal on open fires, braziers were widely adopted for domestic heating, particularly and somewhat more safely used (namely in unglazed, shuttered-only buildings) in the Spanish-speaking world. Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl noted that Tezozomoc, the Tlatoani of the Tepanec city of Azcapotzalco, slept between two braziers because he was so old that he produced no natural heat. Nineteenth-century British travellers such as diplomat and scientist Woodbine Parish and the writer Richard Ford, author of "A Handbook for Travellers in Spain", state that widely braziers were considered healthier than fireplaces and chimneys.


title: Brazier

text: The brazier could sit in the open in a large room; often it was incorporated into furniture. Many cultures developed their own variants of a low table, with a heat source underneath and blankets to capture the warmth: the "kotatsu" in Japan, the "korsi" in Iran, the "sandali" in Afghanistan, and the foot stove in northern Europe. In Spain the "brasero" continued to be one of the main means of heating until the early 20th century; Gerald Brenan described in his memoir "South from Granada" its widespread habit in the 1920s of dying embers of a brazier beneath a cloth-covered table to keep the legs and feet of the family warm on winter evenings.


title: Brazier

text: Moist rose and grapevine trimmings produce a pungent, sweet-smelling smoke, and make charcoal, but unless fully pre-dried (seasoned or kilned) as with wood, do produce carcinogenic particulates in the air.


title: Brazier

text: In some churches a brazier is used to host a small fire, called new fire, which is then used to light the Paschal candle during the Easter Vigil.


title: Brazier

text: Braziers were common on industrial picket lines, largely replaced by protest marches and rallies, and a newspaper casts strikes as more white collar as a further reason for their decline.


title: Brazier

text: The Japanese translation is "hibachi" - principally for cooking and in cultural rituals such as the Japanese tea ceremony.


title: Brazier

text: Since 1957 Dairy Queen has used the word "brazier" on their signage to indicate the particular locations that serve hot food like hot dogs and hamburgers, etc..


title: Dryland farming

text: Dryland farming and dry farming encompass specific agricultural techniques for the non-irrigated cultivation of crops. Dryland farming is associated with drylands, areas characterized by a cool wet season (which charges the soil with virtually all the moisture that the crops will receive prior to harvest) followed by a warm dry season. They are also associated with arid conditions, areas prone to drought and those having scarce water resources.


title: Dryland farming

text: Dryland farming has evolved as a set of techniques and management practices used by farmers to continually adapt to the presence or lack of moisture in a given crop cycle. In marginal regions, a farmer should be financially able to survive occasional crop failures, perhaps for several years in succession. Survival as a dryland farmer requires careful husbandry of the moisture available for the crop and aggressive management of expenses to minimize losses in poor years. Dryland farming involves the constant assessing of the amount of moisture present or lacking for any given crop cycle and planning accordingly. Dryland farmers know that to be financially successful they have to be aggressive during the good years in order to offset the dry years.


title: Dryland farming

text: Dryland farming is dependent on natural rainfall, which can leave the ground vulnerable to dust storms, particularly if poor farming techniques are used or if the storms strike at a particularly vulnerable time. The fact that a fallow period must be included in the crop rotation means that fields cannot always be protected by a cover crop, which might otherwise offer protection against erosion.


title: Dryland farming

text: Some of the theories of dryland farming developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries claimed to be scientific but were in reality pseudoscientific and did not stand up to empirical testing. For example, it was alleged that tillage would seal in moisture, but such "dust mulching" ideas are based on what people imagine "should" happen, or have been told, rather than what testing actually confirms. In actuality, it has been shown that tillage increases water losses to evaporation. The book "" explores the effects that this had on people who were encouraged to homestead in an area with little rainfall; most smallholdings failed after working miserably to cling on.


title: Dryland farming

text: Dry farming depends on making the best use of the "bank" of soil moisture that was created by winter rainfall. Some dry farming practices include:


title: Dryland farming

text: Dry farming may be practiced in areas that have significant annual rainfall during a wet season, often in the winter. Crops are cultivated during the subsequent dry season, using practices that make use of the stored moisture in the soil. California, Colorado, Kansas, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming, in the United States, are a few states where dry farming is practiced for a variety of crops.


title: Dryland farming

text: Dryland farming is used in the Great Plains, the Palouse plateau of Eastern Washington, and other arid regions of North America such as in the Southwestern United States and Mexico (see Agriculture in the Southwestern United States and Agriculture in the prehistoric Southwest), the Middle East and in other grain growing regions such as the steppes of Eurasia and Argentina. Dryland farming was introduced to southern Russia and Ukraine by Ukrainian Mennonites under the influence of Johann Cornies, making the region the breadbasket of Europe. In Australia, it is widely practiced in all states but the Northern Territory.


title: Dryland farming

text: Dry farmed crops may include grapes, tomatoes, pumpkins, beans, and other summer crops. Dryland grain crops include wheat, corn, millet, rye, and other grasses that produce grains. These crops grow using the winter water stored in the soil, rather than depending on rainfall during the growing season.