The Mountebanks: In Defense of a Lozenge
1. Introduction
Sooner or later, most fans of Gilbert and Sullivan become aware of the infamous “Lozenge Plot” that was the source of some of the duo’s quarreling in the later years of their collaboration. The story, as popularized in the 1999 film Topsy Turvy goes that in 1884, in the wake of the relative failure of Princess Ida, Gilbert proposed to Sullivan for their next opera a plot about a magic lozenge that transforms whoever consumes it into whatever they are pretending to be. Sullivan rejected the plot out of hand, for two primary reasons. Firstly, that the premise bore at least a superficial resemblance to that of The Sorcerer, and he did not want to be seen as repeating himself. Secondly, that at this point Sullivan was tiring of Gilbert’s zany, unrealistic plots, and wanted to set “a story of human interest and probability.”
The lozenge plot was something Gilbert was clearly intent on doing at some point though, and he periodically floated it again in various forms and guises, and Sullivan continued to reject it.
It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that when Gilbert and Sullivan seemed to have broken up for good in the wake of the “Carpet Quarrel” during the run of The Gondoliers, Gilbert made the lozenge opera his first project with a new composer. And, with a score by former Opera Comique music director and frequent Gilbert and Sullivan conductor Alfred Cellier, The Mountebanks premiered in January of 1892. It enjoyed a run of 229 performances, comparable to Utopia (Limited), and longer than either His Excellency or The Grand Duke, to put this in perspective with Gilbert’s other late (post-1890) libretti. Reviews were, if not absolute raves, generally positive. Almost every opening night review I read made mention of the enthusiastic audience response, and the ones that went into details seemed near-unanimous that both libretto and music were successful.
Despite this reasonable success, however, the opera faded into obscurity fairly quickly after Gilbert’s death, and is now mostly discussed by people like me: Gilbert and Sullivan nerds who have spent way too much time thinking about it. And the general consensus among that community, at least in my anecdotal experience, seems to be that Sullivan was right to reject the libretto. That it is overly long, confusing, and often just too bizarre to be effective. That although it has its charming and humorous moments, not to mention catchy tunes, it is not a work that would be likely to find a popular audience, and only retains interest today for the aforementioned community of Gilbert and Sullivan nerds. I have seen it compared to Utopia (Limited) in that respect. Unanimously agreed to be an incredibly flawed opera, even if we, in our particular fandom, have a soft spot for it.
I was aware of this general impression before I ever read the libretto of The Mountebanks, and when I did finally pick up the libretto to read, I expected that I would be getting something with a similar set of flaws to Utopia (Limited) or The Grand Duke, two other late Gilbert libretti with which I was much more familiar.
And yet when I finished reading The Mountebanks, I failed to see any of the flaws I had prepared myself for. I found it more coherent than Utopia (Limited), more compelling than His Excellency, and, though of a comparable length to The Grand Duke, far less bogged down by tedious dialogue. I also found it the most psychologically interesting of any Gilbert libretto I had read up to that point.
2. What is wrong with The Mountebanks?
Like Teresa in the opera, I felt some need to yield to popular opinion. After all, if so many smart and analytical people have come to the conclusion that The Mountebanks is bad after thinking on it for much longer than I had, surely it must be? But if you pressed me for what the actual problems with it were, all I could really come up with is:
It’s long. (“Long” is not actually in and of itself a flaw, if the content justifies the length.)
It’s a bit bizarre. (“Bizarre” is not actually in and of itself a flaw, and while Gilbert never wrote anything this bizarre with Sullivan, the whole span of his career, early and late, is filled with bizarre works of all shapes and sizes.)
Its complexity may make it difficult to follow. (I personally did not find it difficult to follow, but I will concede that anything that moves between three or more separate plots may be found, by some audience members, difficult to follow.)
These are three criticisms which apply, to a greater or lesser extent, to all of Gilbert’s late libretti -- except, perhaps, that His Excellency is not especially bizarre. But none of these were issues I actually took with The Mountebanks, even though long, bizarre, and complex are absolutely three adjectives that describe it. But while I could see how these would make it a tough sell for popular audiences (though, again, it was relatively successful in its initial run), I could not actually come up with specific reasons why it should make The Mountebanks actually poor in quality.
I have regularly seen His Excellency praised by these same sorts of analytical esoteric experts as one of Gilbert’s best late libretti. It is certainly much easier to wrap one’s head around in that the concept of a town getting revenge on a Governor who enjoys humiliating them is not one which requires long explanations of convoluted legal devices. And yet when I read it, I found I was not tremendously enthused, and spotted several specific things I felt could be improved. Here is a sample:
The Dame Cortland subplot is, at worst, completely unresolved, or, at best, resolved so slightly, and so far ahead of the finale, that it’s easy to think there was meant to be more to it.
The “resolution” of the Dame Cortland subplot, such as it is, is based on a premise exactly opposite the premise that kicked it off in the first place. -- It is, in fact, a worse-executed version of the second act of The Grand Duke. Worse executed because it is not clear what the characters’ motivations actually are, and what would even constitute a happy ending. Indeed, part of what makes it feel unresolved is that Griffenfeld, the villain who is supposed to be thwarted, seems to get everything he wants out of it.
The dramatic beat that should be the Act I finale (the Prince Regent declaring Griffenfeld demoted, thus changing the perceived status quo) doesn’t occur until the first scene of Act II, which is itself an extended musical sequence reminiscent of an Act I finale. What is the Act I finale is the characters preparing to go to the Prince Regent so he can do the thing, instead of him actually doing the thing. It would be like if Act I of Iolanthe ended with Strephon calling upon the fairies for help, and then the curtain dropped, and the second act began with the last ten minutes of the Act I finale.
If Christina and the Prince Regent had come up with their plan before Griffenfeld meets the Prince Regent, it would be both more dramatically satisfying and more coherent than the awkward rushed “I overheard!” turnaround that we get. Remember that the Prince Regent came to the town in the first place in response to complaints about Griffenfeld, so there is no reason he couldn’t develop his plan in advance. Putting the plan further in advance -- indeed, showing that there is a comprehensive plan -- would also give more dramatic power to the Prince Regent, which would give all of his scenes with Griffenfeld much more of a humorous dramatic irony. But since he seems to be making it up as he goes along, we don’t get that.
The Christina/Regent romantic subplot goes nowhere. (Yes, there would appear to have been cut scenes that would have addressed this, but they’re not in the finished product.) In addition, she has no chemistry with the Prince Regent. The song in their first scene should be a duet, if the desire is to emphasize that the characters have some nonspecific “kinship.” Frankly, Gilbert could have lifted the framework for this scene straight out of The Mikado.
Griffenfeld doesn’t seem to suffer much from his demotion. The second act could have had a more elaborate sequence of scenes where the various characters he humiliated in the first act give him a series of ironic punishments. Harold could make him dance in the town square, Erling could make him clean the bird droppings off of the statue, and so on. For an opera the entire premise of which is the town getting revenge on Griffenfeld, Griffenfeld sure doesn’t seem to be on the receiving end of much revenge, and so the plot of the second act is not satisfying.
Agree with these criticisms or not, they are specific complaints about particular aspects of the opera’s construction. I can list similarly specific criticisms of Utopia (Limited) and The Grand Duke, along with suggestions for how they could have been avoided. I can even list some such criticisms for The Pirates Of Penzance. But I can’t come up with nearly as long a list for The Mountebanks, and the items that are on that list tend to be more of a tradeoff. Even the first thing I thought of to be cut I soon thereafter realized did actually serve a distinct dramaturgical purpose.
I’ll come back to what criticisms did make my list later, but in the meantime, the question presses on me: What, fundamentally, is wrong with The Mountebanks?
Well, first of all, if you are unfamiliar with the plot of The Mountebanks, I encourage you to read a synopsis. I will link the ones on Wikipedia and The Gilbert And Sullivan Archive, so that it won’t take up too much space here, and so that the basic facts of the synopsis will not be impacted by my biases.
The most specific complaint I’ve seen raised against The Mountebanks that I think might begin to get at the heart of this has to do with the central conceit of the magic lozenge. Specifically, that despite the potion’s machinations, not once does it result in a character actually showing their true selves. Which would be a valid criticism… if that were ever the stated goal of the lozenge plot. I expect this confusion is at least in part due to Gilbert’s somewhat misplaced use of the word “hypocrite” to describe any person who might pretend to be something they’re not for any reason. The common associations we have with the word “hypocrite” would reasonably lead one to believe that a plot about hypocrisy, that concerns itself with the false personas people adopt, must necessarily have some sort of moral about being one’s true self. But that’s not actually something that Gilbert ever says. And indeed, as I think about it, it becomes more and more apparent that that couldn’t have been Gilbert’s aim, because theater already has a perfectly suitable device for characters to reveal their true selves: Soliloquy. This is the point of, for example, Teresa’s “joking” aria. She does reveal her true self there, and it is not under the effect of the lozenge.
This is a widely accepted theatrical maxim to which Gilbert generally subscribed: Characters lie to each other, but they do not lie to the audience. What would a plot device even look like that was designed to make characters reveal their true nature? It would not be Gilbert’s lozenge, which by design obscures their “true” selves by enforcing their disguise.
What made this finally click for me was a realization about Sullivan’s 1898 opera The Beauty Stone, with a libretto by Arthur Wing Pinero and J. Comyns Carr. The central device of the opera is a magical stone that transforms the appearance of whoever possesses it to make them beautiful. It has been observed by many people, delighting in the irony, that Sullivan somehow missed that it was a lozenge plot he had just set. But that realization misses the fact that it wasn’t a lozenge plot at all. It was a disguise plot.
3. Disguises and Lozenges
In a disguise plot, a common occurrence in all sorts of fiction, a character simply adopts some false persona in order to achieve some end. Colonel Fairfax disguises himself as Leonard Meryll to avoid execution. Prince Hilarion disguises himself as a woman to infiltrate Castle Adamant. In The Beauty Stone, Laine uses the stone to become beautiful in order to avoid persecution by the rest of the town.
But a lozenge plot, much more unique to Gilbert, goes one step deeper, by making characters become the disguise. Ludwig does not just act as the Grand Duke, he becomes the Grand Duke, and Julia becomes his wife. The bandits in The Mountebanks initially disguise themselves as monks, but then they become monks, and behave accordingly. The change is not just on the outside, but on the inside.
This sort of language of “being” is common in Gilbert’s work, often in the form of legal fictions to be treated as indistinguishable from practical fact. This is different from the sort of language Gilbert uses to describe disguised characters. Nanki-Poo pretends to be a wandering minstrel, but he is not compelled to behave as one all the time. Pooh-Bah is the Lord High Everything Else, with all the contradictions that entails.
The Beauty Stone lacks this extra layer. It only acts superficially, which, need I say, is the entire point. Laine doesn’t learn anything about herself from the ordeal; she learns about other people after she experiences how they behave differently toward her based on her appearance at the time. The focus is external. Indeed, the stone itself could just as easily be replaced with a non-magical makeover and the plot would make as much sense. Gilbert’s lozenge plot almost requires magic if he wants to treat it in a serious manner, because it creates a compulsion within its characters to behave antithetically to what they actually want, or what is in their best interest. Without magic, Gilbert resorts to laws and contracts to compel characters to behave against their own wishes. But because laws and contracts have no inherent ability to enforce themselves, Gilbert can only push this so far before it becomes comical through absurdity.
Viewed through this lens, Frederic’s contract in The Pirates Of Penzance is a form of lozenge, and his seemingly irrational behavior makes sense as a response to a sort of supernatural compulsion to duty. Frederic is obligated to the word of his indentures in the same way that the peers in Iolanthe are magically compelled to vote as Strephon wants them to, even if that’s not how they actually feel. In many of Gilbert’s plots, the law is treated with a comical degree of reverence as some immutable divine ordinance that are all magically compelled to obey, to the point that on no less than three occasions in the Gilbert and Sullivan canon, characters who have the power to change the law, and the motive to do so, spend time wishing that they could. The one time in the canon where a character has the power to change the law, the motive to do so, and actually does so immediately rather than as a last resort, it turns out that he retroactively never actually had that power, and so his change to the law is undone. (In addition, he spends the bulk of the second act annoyed at the consequences of the law he changed, and doesn’t think to simply change it again.)
Viewed in this light, it becomes clear that the point of the lozenge plot isn’t to examine why characters put on disguises and lie to each other, but instead to examine why characters indulge in hypocrisy -- that is, why they behave in ways contrary to what they want, against their own self interest, fully aware of what they’re doing, and wishing they could stop, but finding themselves unable to.
This may seem like a fairly far-fetched notion as a compelling theatrical conceit, but when I came to this realization, I saw the seed of what I perceived to be an intriguing psychological idea there. Because it is, after all, not so ridiculous that what a person’s brain says, and what it does, are so mismatched. I will provide some examples of increasing complexity:
When I have a headache, I know that the pain is, quite literally, all inside my head. But just being aware of this, I cannot simply will it to go away.
There have been studies showing that the placebo effect still works even when you know it’s a placebo. You can be fully aware that the sugar pill you took can’t possibly be alleviating your symptoms, and yet find those symptoms alleviated anyway.
This works in the reverse as well, and I would bet that there’s a good chance that at some point you’ve read a list of symptoms, and began to feel them yourself, even though you don’t actually have the disease, and you know it.
Have you ever felt sad, or anxious, or anything else, even when there was no reason for you to feel that way, but you just inexplicably felt it? Or had impostor syndrome when you knew it was unfounded? An irrational fear of something you know consciously, intellectually, cannot hurt you? Telling yourself to feel otherwise does not actually allow you to do so.
And then the big one: Mental illness. Depression, anxiety, and so on. It is possible to be perfectly aware of how your brain is behaving, why it’s behaving the way it is, and why it shouldn’t be, but still fall victim to it. Medication doesn’t work by reassuring you that everything’s alright; it works by changing the chemistry of your brain, and you can know all about how it does it, why it works, and what effects it has, and be just as affected as if you hadn’t.
These are all examples of why a person would behave irrationally, perhaps even in direct contradiction of what they want to do. This even gets into the unnerving existential question of free will. And this is what manifests in all of the plots of The Mountebanks, with its climax in Teresa’s near-suicide. She knows her madness is the result of a spell; As far as she is aware at that moment, it will be over in about an hour (she is not present for the revelation that Pietro has lost the antidote) and if she can hold out for that long, she’ll be back to normal. There is no rational reason she should be on the verge of killing herself at this moment, except that that is what her brain, altered by the potion, wants her to do, even if she, in the consciously thinking part of her brain, doesn’t actually want it. And that, grim as it may seem, is not an unrealistic interpretation of how depression can lead to suicide.
This issue of internal cognitive dissonance is also not an aspect of human psychology tackled very often in popular media. That Gilbert deals with it at all is arguably quite ahead of his time, and the lozenge plot proves to be a creative way of dealing with it effectively. Notably, Teresa’s madness is treated with the utmost seriousness. Ironically, in Sullivan’s pleas for Gilbert to come up with a plot of “human interest and probability,” I think he turned down what turned out to be the most uniquely “human” libretto Gilbert ever penned.
But while Teresa’s near suicide is the climax of The Mountebanks, it is not the only aspect. The question now is, does it work as a whole?
4. What, really, is wrong with The Mountebanks?
At this point, I’ll address the three specific criticisms I have seen raised against The Mountebanks:
The Minestra/Risotto subplot is weak, does not properly resolve, and can be lifted right out of the opera without affecting anything else.
The Pietro/Nita/Bartolo scene just before the finale kills the pacing and mood.
The three main plots have nothing to do with one another, except that they happen to run in parallel.
4a. The Minestra/Risotto subplot is unsatisfactory and unnecessary.
The Minestra/Risotto subplot does not get revisited after the first scene of the second act. Granted, it doesn’t necessarily need an explicit resolution, as, unlike with the Dame Cortland subplot in His Excellency, it’s not hard to deduce; When the antidote is administered, Minestra reverts back to her old self, and she and Risotto are happy. Their resolution is the same as the rest of the chorus’s. Still, if they’d had a line in the finale to quickly acknowledge it, it might be nice.
That the subplot can be lifted out of the opera without affecting much practically is definitely true, but I don’t think the subplot is entirely without purpose. Because it introduces each act, it provides a symmetry between the two acts, and it uses that position to do something probably more important that it seems at first glance: Introduce the audience to how the potion actually works. Of all the characters directly affected by the potion, Minestra’s situation is the simplest to wrap one’s head around. She pretended to be old, now she is old. This is a purely surface-level change. It does not affect her emotions or her behavior. She is the only character for whom this is the case, and it makes sense that, when dealing with a unique magical plot device of his own invention, the effects of which turn on nuances of human psychology, Gilbert would see fit to ease the audience into its deployment gradually. Which is exactly what he does. The order in which we see the characters post-potion is:
Minestra, transformed at the surface level only.
Nita and Bartolo, who have a surface level change that must clearly manifest in an internal change as well, as literal clockwork automata have their movements preset.
The bandits, now monks, whose apparent change is in costume only, but manifests primarily internally as they are now compelled to behave as monks.
Teresa, who has no external change, but a significant internal change.
(Note: Teresa does appear in the Minestra scene, which itself has a function I will get to later, but the full nature of her transformation is not explored until later, when she can discuss it with Alfredo.)
See how Gilbert gradually morphs from a purely aesthetic change -- easy to comprehend at a glance -- to an entirely internal change, which requires more thought and nuance. The choice of plots seems perfectly designed to gradually build from pure disguise to pure lozenge, climaxing with a shockingly serious examination of mental illness in Teresa. And so even if Minestra’s absence would not literally affect the sequence of events that are the story of the opera, she carries an important dramaturgical function all the same.
That is not to say that, in practice, the Minestra/Risotto scenes can’t feel a little unnecessary. They can. But I feel this may be a case where removing them might only cause more confusion. It’s a tradeoff and I can’t think of a better third option. Keep Minestra/Risotto or cut them, I can see both situations having their pros and cons, and neither strikes me as obviously better.
4b. The Pietro/Nita/Bartolo scene just before the finale kills the mood and the pacing of the last stretch of the opera.
I can see how this could be the case, but I also strongly feel that the scene serves an invaluable dramaturgical purpose, both in resolving the Pietro/Nita/Bartolo plot, and in setting up the finale.
The Pietro/Nita/Bartolo subplot needs a resolution, and there is no practical way to move that resolution to an earlier scene, because this penultimate scene hinges on Nita and Bartolo having just found out that Pietro’s lost the antidote and they are stuck like this. Pietro has, to this point, shown a blatant disregard for Nita and Bartolo’s well-being, but he was motivated before by greed, and Nita and Bartolo also stood to profit. Now, with no chance of making his sale, the fact that Pietro continues to behave cruelly to them shows that he’s just an awful person in all weather. Realizing that is what causes Nita and Bartolo to quit. The scene is also Bartolo’s proposal to Nita. The trio in that scene isn’t just a catchy tune. It’s there for a reason, and the verses are in a specific order for a reason too. In a well-directed performance, each verse would be sung in a different tone, though perhaps Cellier does not make that clear or easy with his musical setting.
As for how this scene sets up the finale, we have to remember that the nature of Teresa’s madness isn’t well-defined. Placing her final mad scene adjacent with the Ophelia trio thus juxtaposes her madness with Ophelia’s, and indeed juxtaposes this with the previous conversation about how, if Nita is a clockwork automaton that has been programmed to play Ophelia, Nita will be compelled shortly to drown herself. This all makes it unambiguously clear what is happening when Teresa steps toward the parapet, because in our mind, we immediately connect the vaguely defined mental state of Teresa with the clearly laid out course of action that was just set in front of Nita. The specificity of Nita’s case is rather cleverly used to clarify Teresa’s, but it also allows Nita to have a particularly distinct resolution, because she and Bartolo can attempt to avoid Ophelia’s fate by changing the story of Hamlet. We don’t know if they would have been successful, because the plot does not get that far, but Teresa does not have that option.
4c. The plots have nothing to do with one another.
I will now observe that, in addressing these first two criticisms, I feel I have also addressed the third. Because while the plots do not directly interact in a literal sense, they repeatedly serve to support each other in a thematic sense. Both Minestra and Nita are there to prime the audience to understand what is happening with Teresa, whose madness is the entire climax of the opera. It is all looking toward that finale.
Could the plots be more closely tied together literally as well? Possible, but I feel like in some ways, the separation between them is an advantage, as the ability to compartmentalize the various sets of characters into small self-contained groupings makes it easier to keep track of who’s doing what and why. The plots are still connected thematically, and dramatically they are all structured to run together in a single coherent arc, but the bit of separation between them helps to keep them from becoming too muddled.
5. Dramatic Structure
At this point, I’d like to give a sort of chronological rundown of the plot points in The Mountebanks, and the dramatic functions they serve, in order to demonstrate what I think is an incredibly elegant dramatic structure:
The bandits introduce themselves, and their engagements, suitably setting up the chorus involvement in the show.
Elvino mentions the alchemist staying in the inn, suitably setting up the avenue by which the potion enters the plot.
Minestra and Risotto are introduced. The ensuing dialogue is dripping with symbolic foreshadowing with lines like “Think of it ten years hence” and “Next time you’ll be older.” It is strongly suggested that Minestra and Risotto will not last as a couple, setting up their minor Act II conflict.
Arrostino introduces the plan to ambush the monks.
Alfredo sings about his love for Teresa. This may also contain symbolic foreshadowing with lines like “My lady drives me crazy” and “Might tend to loss of reason.” But that may be a stretch.
Scene for Teresa, Alfredo, and Ultrice, which sets up their relationships.
Elvino introduces the plot point of the Duke and Duchess stopping at the inn, and the plot point of Alfredo and Ultrice impersonating them for the sake of a dress rehearsal.
Pietro and Co. arrive. Pietro introduces the notion of the clockwork figures. During his speech, the stage directions say he repeatedly drinks from a wineskin, drawing attention to that important prop. The relationships between the three are set up.
The previously set-up alchemist blows himself up. Elvino turns up with the potion, can’t read the label, and leaves it with Pietro, who devises his plan.
Ultrice overhears, setting up her plot.
Originally, after this, there was supposed to be a recit for Ultrice and Teresa which would have set up Teresa’s aria and made clearer Teresa’s motivation. At some point, and for some reason, this was replaced with just a short monologue for Teresa which does not fill the same function. I do not know why the recit was cut. It may have something to do with the fact that Cellier left it incomplete when he died, but on the other hand, it doesn’t seem like asking Ivan Caryll to complete a few bars of recit would have been too tall an order. It may have been a cut for concern of run time, but it’s just not a very long recit, and it served the function of giving Teresa something to react to to spur her next aria. If I were directing a production, I would try to reinstate it.
Teresa’s aria explains her attitude and behavior toward Alfredo, and the duet gives Alfredo a way to directly respond to that. Also sets up Teresa’s feigning madness for the Act I finale.
Act I finale. The characters enter in sequence and remind us of what they’re pretending. Of note, we see the bandits pretending to be monks, which allows us to contrast that behavior with how they behave when they actually are monks. (That sequence was originally much more protracted, and was wisely cut down.) We see the dress rehearsal with Alfredo and Ultrice as Duke and Duchess, and Pietro narrating the show with Nita and Bartolo dressed as the clockwork figures. A deal is made about Pietro taking the potion while pretending it’s poison, which gives Act II a ticking clock. The potion is then distributed, and everyone takes it at once.
In a symmetry with Act I, we revisit Minestra/Risotto, and everything from their first scene comes back with dramatic irony. This is both satisfying in its own right, and puts into perspective for the audience the one thing that’s changed: The potion.
Teresa enters the scene and comments on her curious onset madness. Her duet with Minestra, juxtaposing the two, clarifies for the audience that this is likewise the potion’s doing, and not Teresa’s continued act. It also re-introduces the audience to Teresa briefly, which is important because she won’t be back again for a while, but she is the single most important character for the climax of the plot, so we’d best keep her in the back of our minds.
We now see Nita and Bartolo transformed. Aside from getting a sense of their new situation, their relationship develops, as does Pietro’s possessive behavior toward Nita -- needless to say exacerbated by Pietro having literally turned her into an object.
The bandits as monks enter, and we get their dilemma, along with the women’s chorus, who have up to this point been largely ignored as a character. But they are affected by the potion because they were all engaged to the bandits, and the bandits, now being monks, are forbidden from marrying, so everyone has a stake.
Pietro explains to them all the nature of the potion, which is important so that later, when the plot threads are all coming together, Gilbert doesn’t need to interrupt it with an explanation of how the chorus knows it’s all Pietro’s fault. (This was a fault with The Sorcerer, where the only characters who actually know about the potion are Alexis, Aline, and Wells. Wells is never introduced to any other character, yet somehow, by the finale, everyone including the chorus seems to grasp the situation.)
Pietro also explains his illness, reminding us of the ticking clock, and also emphasizing Pietro’s greed, with the degree to which he is willing to put not only others, but himself in harm’s way if it means he can make a sale.
Scene for Teresa, Alfredo, and Ultrice, commenting on their situation. This completes the section of the act that is simply a catalogue of how every character is affected by the potion. It also rounds out the section of the act of letting everybody (except for Risotto and Minestra) know that this should all be over in an hour.
Ultrice reveals to the audience that she has stolen the antidote, and has no intention of letting this be over in an hour.
The plot threads begin to come together again as they did in the first act, with Pietro preparing to make his sale to the Duke and Duchess, only to be thwarted when the Duke turns out to be Alfredo. Note so far the symmetry between the acts, each essentially cataloguing its characters and relationships in some order, and then bringing them all together for a big shift in the status quo. We’re about to do the same, which should resolve the plot, but the resolution is defied because Pietro’s lost the antidote. All curse Pietro as the villain, as is proper.
The aforementioned Pietro/Nita/Bartolo scene, which resolves their subplot, and sets up the following scene as I mentioned before. I think it’s also worth noting that Pietro’s illness -- now a sure death sentence -- is also essentially a primer so the audience is prepared to understand Nita’s more roundabout death sentence, which, as mentioned before, is a primer for Teresa’s.
Teresa’s mad scene, Ultrice’s burst of guilt, she calls everybody back in and gives up the antidote.
All is restored.
Every plot point introduced gets followed up on, and every plot turn is appropriately introduced at least one scene in advance. There is even foreshadowing in the dialogue and stage directions, showing that Gilbert was absolutely conscious of the importance of planting and payoff. A great example is Pietro diluting the potion in the wineskin. The plot reason that the potion needs to be diluted in the wineskin is so that it can be distributed en masse. But imagine if this were all done in one scene. Pietro reads that the potion must be diluted, does so, and then immediately after Alfredo takes the wineskin to distribute it. It would be blindingly obvious that the only reason Pietro diluted the potion is because the plot demands it, and it would have seemed remarkably contrived. But because the dilution happens a full scene and a half before the distribution, when Pietro does it, we’re not thinking about the plot reason why that has to be the case. It’s just how the potion says it works. And then when Alfredo distributes it, it’s long enough gone that the artifice, that the only reason the potion had that arbitrary rule was to serve the plot, is obfuscated. We just remember that the potion is in the wineskin and has been for over a scene now.
All theatrical plots are by definition contrived, but the more important events are pushed up against each other, the more contrived they feel. This is why the Valjean and Javert’s repeated meetings in Les Miserables feel extraordinarily coincidental in the three-hour musical, but only mildly so in the 650,000-word book, where a lot of time (both real and perceived by the audience) elapses in between meetings, and there is reasonable linking material to explain why they keep happening. Gilbert routinely does this sort of setting up of turns in the plot before they pay off in The Mountebanks.
The symmetrical structure of the acts makes it easy for the audience to grasp the difference between the pre- and post-potion characters. The scenes in the first act are ordered to alternate the slower Alfredo/Teresa scenes with the brighter and more fun bandit and Pietro/Nita/Bartolo scenes, while the scenes in the second act are ordered to gradually ease the audience into understanding the full extent of what the potion does.
The symmetrical structure of the acts also allows Gilbert to quite skillfully set up a fake-out resolution when Pietro realizes he’s missing the antidote. But the fact that Gilbert allowed Ultrice to tell the audience what she had done a scene earlier means that we can get not only the dramatic impact of a defied resolution, but the anticipation that comes of knowing something the characters don’t. It also prevents us from feeling blindsided by an improperly set up twist. And then it has a surprising impact on tone. Because if this were a comedy, Gilbert could have ended the show there and given everyone a clear happily ever after. And I take for my evidence here the fact that this effectively is the scene where the bandits’ plot is resolved. They’ve gone through all the typical Gilbertian comic opera motions, and just need the MacGuffin to get into place. But the other two main plots, if they resolved here, would lack a satisfying arc.
For the Pietro/Nita/Bartolo plot, that arc cannot be completed without the defied resolution, because they need the despair of thinking they’re stuck in this state forever. We need to see Pietro’s behavior under these circumstances to fully grasp just how awful a person he is, and that is the impetus Nita and Bartolo need to leave him. Once again, the Ophelia trio may be a catchy tune, but the lyrics are incredibly bitter.
For the Alfredo/Teresa/Ultrice subplot, we cannot have the resolution until Ultrice has her change of heart, which, of course, cannot happen until after the fake-out resolution because Ultrice is the character who makes that happen.
I will note here another parallel with The Sorcerer, in the resolutions of each. In The Sorcerer, both Alexis and Wells are consciously responsible for afflicting the village with a magic spell, and both subsequently regret it. Alexis, however, only regrets it and sets out to undo it when the effects of it begin to inconvenience him personally. Wells, on the other hand, has an attack of guilt, yet he is reluctant to undo the spell, because it requires a sacrifice on his part. He ultimately yields, and undoes the spell. Meanwhile, in The Mountebanks, both Pietro and Ultrice are consciously responsible for afflicting the village with a magic spell (Pietro by administering it, Ultrice by withholding the antidote), and both subsequently regret it. Pietro, when he no longer stands to gain from it and it threatens his life personally, and Ultrice when she has a bout of guilt. Like Wells, Ultrice is initially reluctant to allow the spell to be broken because it would require a sacrifice on her part. Both resolutions are strikingly similar when you put it like that, yet I find the resolution of The Mountebanks to be much more satisfying, which I attribute to the following causes:
The spell in The Mountebanks is much more clearly damaging, and needs to be undone. In The Sorcerer, by the time the final scene rolls around, it’s really only Alexis and maybe Lady Sangazure who are unhappy with the new status quo, so it feels like Wells it bending over backwards just to help out Alexis, and Wells’ guilt feels relatively unfounded. Ultrice would be potentially condemning three people to death if she did nothing, and so she has much more cause to feel guilty.
Alexis and Pietro are both jerks (and Pietro an unabashed with-malice-of-forethought villain), but Alexis seems to win at the end of The Sorcerer. He gets exactly what he wants. Pietro, meanwhile, if he doesn’t exactly lose, he doesn’t win either. His situation is relatively unchanged from the beginning of the opera, except that Nita and Bartolo have left him, and now everyone hates him. But at least he doesn’t seem to be vindicated.
Ultrice’s sacrifice feels more proportional. Wells, for the crime of assisting Alexis in giving everyone new romantic partners, has to sacrifice his life. Ultrice, for the crime of trying to possess Alfredo, with tragic consequences she could not have foreseen, simply has to… give up Alfredo.
Most importantly, I think, Ultrice’s sacrifice is entirely her choice. She is not pressured into it by the Pietro or the village. Wells, meanwhile, is pressured by an angry mob led by the person whose fault it actually is. Ultrice’s sacrifice, therefore, is an earnest moment of real character growth, and a satisfying dramatic resolution for her character.
I am somewhat comparing apples to oranges here. After all, the lopsidedness of the scenario in The Sorcerer is part of the point, as it is in service of the class satire that forms much of that opera’s backbone, but which is not present in The Mountebanks. The two genres call for different things. But if it does not demonstrate that The Mountebanks has a more satisfying resolution than The Sorcerer, I would at least take the opinion that it doesn’t as a demonstration that The Mountebanks treats its subject and its characters in a much more realistic and serious manner. Maybe a good thing maybe not depending on your preferences, but certainly a point in favor of giving The Mountebanks a chance to be observed more closely, and through a slightly different lens.
And so, with the possible exception of Minestra/Risotto, all the plots get dramatically satisfying arcs and resolutions. All the exposition occurs in sequence at the beginning before any development happens, all the development happens in the middle, and all the resolutions occur in sequence in the last two scenes, giving everything a very strong overall arc. The plots are thematically linked, everything in them serves a function, and practically, even if they don’t really interfere with each other, they are all tied together by revolving around the impending visit by the Duke and Duchess.
6. Conclusion
At the end of this analysis, I can still see why The Mountebanks is a difficult sell. Long run times scare people, and it is difficult to describe the plot in a way that makes it sound sensible. As well, since most companies doing Gilbert and Sullivan nowadays are on the lower end of the budget spectrum, the large cast and costume requirements would presumably make it difficult for most companies to pull off, and this leads to less exposure, and that creates a vicious cycle of unpopularity. And so, all in all, it is not surprising to me that, after a moderately successful initial run, The Mountebanks would fade into obscurity.
But what I do not think is justified is the prevailing attitude I have seen among Gilbert and Sullivan aficionados that The Mountebanks is deservedly pushed to the side. I hypothesize that this may be due the way this story began: Sullivan rejected the lozenge plot because he was tiring of Gilbert’s incessant topsy-turvyness. The impression given by this story is that the lozenge plot must therefore necessarily have been a zany farce with no emotion that would appeal to Sullivan, and so the desire is created to engage with the lozenge plot, when it finally emerges, on those terms. We assume that it must be, first and foremost, what Sullivan rejected it for being, and overlooks the possibility that Gilbert and Sullivan were not so much talking against each other as past each other. I don’t think Gilbert was trying to annoy Sullivan with his repeated pitches, I think he legitimately saw in the lozenge plot a source of real “human interest and probability” which Sullivan simply didn’t, and this is revealed in the fact that Sullivan accepted as such a plot The Beauty Stone, which might seem to resemble a lozenge plot if all you had was Gilbert’s initial vague description of what a lozenge plot was, but when directly compared to The Mountebanks reveals itself as a completely different sort of plot entirely.
Curiously, Gilbert seemed to not be satisfied with The Mountebanks, writing a week after opening, “fortunately, the public have not yet discovered how bad it is.” But it is no great surprise for a writer to have a skewed perception of their own work, and as this was the final realization of a plot which Gilbert had been pitching for at least a decade, it is understandable that Gilbert might feel some ironic impostor syndrome about.
I hope I have made the case that The Mountebanks is worthy of examination, and, if not that it is a masterpiece, at least that it is a more compelling and better-constructed libretto than its performance history would lead you to believe. It is a unique and inventive turn for Gilbert, possibly more serious and even darker in tone at times than even The Yeomen Of The Guard, but still contains all of the classic Gilbertian touches that audiences know and love.
On the other hand, as Teresa says, “I’m only one, and possibly I’m wrong.”
***
Appendix A: Length and Pacing
I mentioned early on that The Mountebanks is long. The Chappell libretto of Iolanthe is 39 pages. The Chappell libretto of The Yeomen Of The Guard is 48 pages. Utopia (Limited) has 51, and The Mountebanks has 55. That is indeed a long show, but the question should really be more about whether the show justifies its length. A long show can feel much shorter if the pacing is on point, and I believe that in The Mountebanks, it is. There is a pleasant ebb and flow between fast and slow scenes, comic and serious, and the only slow aria that I wish was shorter is Teresa’s first mad song, which could be reduced to just one verse.
Perhaps a judicious editor could make some trims, but the length is certainly no more an issue here than it is in The Grand Duke, the dialogue of which is far more tedious. So I do not see why The Mountebanks should be considered exceptionally guilty of this when other, equally long and more flawed Gilbert libretti are performed more regularly.
For what it’s worth, the Chappell libretto of His Excellency is 60 pages long, though I suspect it may have a shorter run time in practice due to a lower proportion of music, and the music being, on average, faster. For all its flaws, His Excellency does not fall into the trap of shoehorning in a dirge-like madrigal or a stolid contralto ballad in order to placate its composer. The pacing is reliably quick.
Appendix B: Bizarrerie
I expect to most people, the most bizarre aspect of The Mountebanks is how Nita and Bartolo are transformed into literal clockwork automata. Is this Gilbert simply being topsy-turvy for its own sake? I don’t think so. I think the transformation into clockwork specifically offers unique thematic opportunities which Gilbert exploits for their full worth.
I already addressed how it helps ease the audience into the notion that the potion can compel a person to behave in a way that they do not want. Clockwork needs winding up, and can only move in certain predetermined ways. If Nita and Bartolo’s insides have been replaced with clockwork, then it is relatively easy to grasp how while their brains may want to do one thing, their bodies may compel them to do another.
It is also symbolic of Pietro’s possessive attitude toward the two of them, and shows Nita and Bartolo clearly and directly suffering as a direct result of their association with Pietro. Yes, we get Pietro bossing them around in Act I, but they put up with him in Act I, and this pushes them beyond their limit.
That the automata are in turn Hamlet and Ophelia gives them a script to play with high stakes, which also thematically sets up and clarifies Teresa’s plot. That they are from a well-known play opens the door to a dramatically satisfying resolution where Nita and Bartolo renounce their director who has treated them so poorly and set off on their own.
So is the plot bizarre? Yes, but it is not for the sheer sake of being strange.
Appendix C: Hamlet
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention here that it’s certainly no coincidence that Gilbert chose Hamlet as the play to be referred to. After all, literary scholars have debated forever whether the title character is “really sane, but shamming mad,” or “really mad, but shamming sane,” or whether it even makes a difference beyond a certain point. Those quotes, by the by, are spoken by Ophelia in Gilbert’s play Rosencrantz And Guildenstern, which he had written years earlier for Fun magazine, and which, also perhaps not coincidentally, he had staged for the first time just half a year prior to the premier of The Mountebanks.
Appendix D: Humor
I have talked a lot about the serious aspects of The Mountebanks, and I fear I may have given the impression that it is not funny. It is. Gilbert’s jokes are as sharp as ever. Everything with the bandits serves for comic relief -- they are in many ways reminiscent of the Pirates of Penzance. Alfredo is somewhat gloomy, but Teresa and Ultrice’s interactions, especially in the trios and quartets in Act I, have a humorous dynamic reminiscent of Susanna and Marcellina, but with more plot. ("Teeming with unconscious humor" might be my favorite subtle insult in Gilbert's entire oeuvre.) Pietro, Bartolo, and Nita are absolutely characters of the sort that in other circumstances probably would have been written with George Grossmith, Rutland Barrington, and Jessie Bond in mind, and their flavor of humor is perhaps more similar to Jack Point. It is possibly even a minor tour de force that each set of characters not only have a distinct quality of humor, but that this humor is prevalent throughout, yet does not get in the way of the drama. It eases in and out of the plot seamlessly, with no noticeably jarring shifts in tone.
Appendix E: Music
Throughout this analysis, I’ve been focusing on primarily the thematic and structural aspects of the libretto. I haven’t talked about the music, even though that is arguably the biggest way in which an opera makes a first impression.
The music in The Mountebanks is not something to overlook, and contains several striking features, not least of which is the prevalent use of minor keys in a variety of situations. Sullivan almost never uses minor keys, and when he does it is usually in the typical situations of “obviously sad,” “obviously sinister,” or “vaguely middle-eastern.” In The Mountebanks, on the other hand, Cellier uses minor keys in all the following situations and moods:
Liturgical music (The opening chaunt of the monks, “Time there was”)
Mystery (“We are members of a secret society”)
Happiness (“Come all the maidens”)
Anticipation (“Only think, a Duke and Duchess”)
Excitement (“Tabor and drum”)
Humor (“Though I’m a buffoon, recollect”)
And then, of course, the expected places, in confrontations, and in the melancholy strains of Teresa’s mad songs.
I think quite possibly the prominent use of minor keys in happy contexts in the first act helps to make the transition to the more serious minor key music in the second act less jarring. It does feel like it all belongs in one coherent score. I note something similar that Sullivan does in Ruddigore (the only opera in which he uses minor keys a significant amount, where the generic ingenue introduction song, perhaps unique among Sullivan’s generic ingenue introduction songs, is in a minor key, and it helps Rose’s involvement in the story feel musically related to the ghost story Dame Hannah’s just told, even if the plot connection isn’t clear yet.
By and large I do think the music is well characterized for each plot. It helps that the men’s chorus is exclusively connected to the bandits’ plot, giving their music a distinct timbre from the rest of the plots. (Not to mention the aforementioned liturgical music associated with the monks.)
Teresa’s Act I music is characterized by light tripping eighth notes which form the bulk of her first aria (a positively charming number with a witty lyric set to a graceful score), as well as the refrain of her second aria, and subsequent duet with Alfredo. Her Act II music sharply contrasts, with long legato melodies in minor keys.
The music for Nita and Bartolo in the second act is giving a hard-to-describe “clockwork” feel. Both the “Put A Penny In The Slot” number and the Ophelia trio feature in the accompaniment a sort of cycling sixteenth note figure in the winds against a rigid, but gentle, rhythmic bass line. “When Gentlemen Are Eaten Up With Jealousy” gets an obvious clockwork feel by its repetition of the “tic” syllable. Note that these sixteenth note runs are made distinct from Teresa’s tripping eighth notes at a similar tempo because the latter are rather more staccato, and feature more melodic leaps, while the former are more legato, and more stepwise in the melody. It gives the impression of something spinning -- no coincidence, I think, that stepwise sixteenth-note runs are typical of spinning-wheel music. (Schubert’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade”, Phoebe’s opening aria in The Yeomen Of The Guard, Clochette’s opening aria in Florian Pascal’s setting of Eyes And No Eyes, etc.)
Several opening night reviews said the musical highlights were the various choruses, and I would tend to agree. In particular, there are several women’s chorus numbers that are positively infectious, but arguably bring to mind another possible weakness of the show: That the women’s chorus’s connection to the action is a little removed. A hallmark of Gilbert’s libretti is how often and how effectively, when dividing the chorus, he makes each chorus a distinct character with a role in the action. Here, the men are the bandits, later monks, and are directly affected by the potion. The women are… engaged to the bandits, and only affected by the potion insofar as it affects their fiances. I don’t think there’s really a better alternative. Sometimes there just isn’t a good plot-relevant role for the chorus, and Gilbert has certainly written less interesting chorus parts. (The Mikado comes to mind.) Still, if you’re an opera company looking very specifically to show off the great acting capabilities of your women’s chorus, this is no Iolanthe.
There is even a small, easily-missed example of a classic Sullivan-esque double chorus. At the end of the monks scene in Act II, after Pietro has told them that the spell will be removed in an hour, the women sing the newly-introduced chorus "An hour, 'twill rapidly pass," while the men sing a reprise of "Time there was." What is especially exceptional about this is that the former chorus is in a major key, the latter in a minor key, and Cellier does not convert them to the same mode for the counterpoint!
That’s not to say the music is all perfect. As I’ve pointed out before, it’s possible that the setting of the Ophelia trio is too cheerful for the tone of the lyric and the scene, which can give the impression that it is out of place. I do think a lot of that could be made up for in a well-directed performance, but it is a hurdle.
Ultrice’s solo aria is also somewhat musically underwhelming. It doesn’t help that Ultrice doesn’t really get enough material to build up her own musical language. The first time I listened to the score, I found her aria incredibly jarring. It was apparently cut fairly early in the show’s original run, although I assume the recit leading into it must have been left intact because that’s where Ultrice reveals she stole the antidote. I do have a soft spot for the lyric though. The vocabulary is unmistakably Gilbert.
On the whole, however, I would call Cellier’s score for The Mountebanks tremendously successful. It may be too much heresy to suggest that it rivals Sullivan’s best work with Gilbert, but maybe it at least measures up to Sullivan’s B-material, which is still pretty great.
Sources:
The Mountebanks:
Jacobs, Arthur. “Arthur Sullivan, A Victorian Musician”, 1984, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press
Smith, J. Donald. “The Writing and Composition of The Mountebanks: The Evidence of the Autograph Score, the Vocal Scores and the Early Librettos”, published in “Papers, Presentations and Patter: A Savoyards' Symposium.” N.p., Lulu.com. (pp. 129-141)
Stedman, Jane W. “W.S. Gilbert : A Classic Victorian and his Theatre”, 1996, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press
The psychology stuff:
Blease CR, Bernstein MH, Locher COpen-label placebo clinical trials: is it the rationale, the interaction or the pill?BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine 2020;25:159-165.
Kleine-Borgmann J, Schmidt K, Hellmann A, Bingel U. Effects of open-label placebo on pain, functional disability, and spine mobility in patients with chronic back pain: a randomized controlled trial. Pain. 2019 Dec;160(12):2891-2897.
Schaefer, Michael et al. “Why do open-label placebos work? A randomized controlled trial of an open-label placebo induction with and without extended information about the placebo effect in allergic rhinitis.” PloS one vol. 13,3 e0192758. 7 Mar. 2018,
Publishing, Harvard Health. “What Causes Depression?” Harvard Health, June 2009, www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/what-causes-depression.
Various editions of the libretti and vocal scores of the operas referenced are available on the Gilbert And Sullivan Archive as well as the Internet Archive.
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