Eyes and No Eyes

Eyes and No Eyes, or The Art of Seeing is a one-act musical entertainment with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music originally by Thomas German Reed that premiered on July 5 1875 at St. George's Hall in London and ran for only a month. The original music was lost, and twenty years later new music was composed by "Florian Pascal" (a pseudonym for Joseph Williams, Jr., a music publisher who acquired the copyright to the show) and published but not then performed. [ [http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/other_gilbert/eyes_and_no_eyes/pascal.html Florian Pascal profile at the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive] ] [ [http://www.musicweb-international.com/garlands/39.htm "A Thirty-ninth Garland of British Light Music Composers" at MusicWeb International] ] The piece is still occasionally played by amateur societies and was presented at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in 2006.

Background

This work is the last in a series of six one-act musical plays written by Gilbert for Thomas German Reed and his wife Priscilla between 1869 and 1875. The German Reeds presented respectable, family-friendly musical entertainments beginning in 1855, at a time when the theatre in Britain had gained a poor reputation as an unsavory institution and was not attended by much of the middle class. Shakespeare was played, but most of the entertainments consisted of poorly translated French operettas, risque burlesques and incomprehensible broad farces. [ [http://diamond.boisestate.edu/gas/books/bond/introduction.htm Bond, Introduction] ]

While written before "Trial by Jury", this work was not staged until after "Trial" had become a hit. During this period, both Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan were still producing a considerable amount of work separately. "Eyes and No Eyes" is the most tightly written of Gilbert's libretti for the German Reed Entertainments. [http://www.cris.com/~oakapple/gasdisc/eyes_no_eyes.htm "Eyes and No Eyes" at "A Gilbert and Sullivan Discography"] ] "Eyes and No Eyes" is Gilbert's version of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes". Like Gilbert's 1871 entertainment, "A Sensation Novel", the work was rescored by Pascal two decades later in a style reminiscent of early Debussy, but it seems to fit this work.

The opening scene of the piece reveals Clochette alone, singing as she sits at the spinning wheel. Gilbert and Sullivan would reuse this idea in the opening scene of their 1888 opera, "The Yeomen of the Guard". [Ainger, p. 110]

Roles

*Cassandre, "a wealthy farmer, in love with Nicolette" (bass) – Alfred Reed
*Columbine and Clochette, "his nieces" (mezzo-soprano) and (soprano) – Fanny Holland and Leonora Braham
*Arlequin, "brother of...." (baritone) – Alfred Bishop
*Pierrot (tenor) – R. Corney Grain
*Nicolette, "an old coquette" (contralto) – Priscilla German Reed [Gänzl, Kurt. "The British Musical Theatre", Vol. 1 1865-1914, p. 98, Basingstoke, The Macmillan Press, 1986]

ynopsis

The story is built on symmetry: There are two pairs of young lovers and one pair of old dotards. During the first half, there is a non-existent cloak said to be visible only to true lovers. In the second half there is a real cloak supposedly visible only to the eyes of flirts.

Twin brothers, Arlequin and Pierrot, love Columbine and Clochette (although they love them equally and have not decided which belongs to which). Columbine has lost the cloak that she has just bought for her uncle, Cassandre, and the girls fear his anger when he finds the money gone and no cloak. The girls observe that their uncle and the others are all very flirtatious. They decide to pretend that the non-existent cloak is "visible only to true lovers, and absolutely invisible to flirts of every degree". They pretend to admire it on each other and convince the boys that it is real. Uncle Cassandre is engaged to Nicolette, who is an "acquired taste". He has spent thirty years acquiring a taste for all her odious attributes. Columbine convinces them, too, that she has acquired a magic cloak visible to only true lovers.

Just then, however, Clochette finds the original cloak that the girls had purchased. Columbine is afraid their uncle will beat her when he hears of the deception. Clochette has a bright thought: "Tell him you made a mistake, and that it’s visible to flirts and coquettes but invisible to true lovers." This they do, and sure enough, Cassandre and Nicolette pretend not to be able to see the cloak. The brothers now return, having "reformed" and are overjoyed to be able to see the cloak. Now the brothers and the older pair both demand to know what is the true nature of the magic. Thinking fast, the girls reply, "Well, uncle, in a kind of way you’re both right. It’s visible to true lovers under thirty, and invisible to true lovers over thirty." Everyone is very satisfied by this, and the uncle now offers the girls to the boys. He flips a coin to decide which boy gets which girl. Once assigned, the boys complain that each loves the other girl, and the girls feel the same. They surreptitiously switch back, and all ends happily.

Musical numbers

*Introduction
*No. 1. "As I at My Wheel Sit Spinning" (Clochette)
*No. 2. "Yes, Yes, I Am That Miserable Beauty" (Nicolette)
*No. 3. "Of Our Parents Each Child is the Son" (Clochette, Pierrot, and Arlequin)
*No. 4. "Well, Here's a Very Pretty State of Things" (Clochette, Columbine, Pierrot and Arlequin)
*No. 5. "When You Were Eight and Twenty" (Cassandre and Nicolette)
*No. 6. "As I Was Going Along the Road" (Columbine) (DELETED)
*No. 6. "Now, Columbine, the Magic Cloak Produce" (Cassandre, Nicolette, Columbine, and Clochette)
*No. 7. Finale — "Agony and Fell Dispair"

Notes

References

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* (with an introduction by Stedman)

External links

* [http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/other_gilbert/eyes_and_no_eyes/index.html "Eyes and No Eyes"] at the G&S Archive, including links to the libretto, score and Midi files
* [http://www.cris.com/~oakapple/gasdisc/eyes_no_eyes.htm "Eyes and No Eyes"] at the Gilbert and Sullivan Discography
* [http://uk.geocities.com/[e-mail]/index.html Contains link to a well-formatted libretto]
* [http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/newsletters/trumpet_bray/html/tb20_7.html Brief discussion of the piece]
* [http://diamond.boisestate.edu/gas/books/bond/introduction.htm Introduction to autobiography of Jesse Bond]