Dame Bridget Cicely D'Oyly Carte DBE (25 March 1908 – April 1985), was the granddaughter of Richard D'Oyly Carte and head of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1948 until 1982. Richard DOyly Carte (May 3, 1844 – April 3, 1901) was a London theatrical impresario during the latter half of the nineteenth century. ... The DOyly Carte Opera Company staged performances of Gilbert and Sullivans Savoy operas in the UK, Europe, America, South Africa and elsewhere from the nineteenth century to the twenty first. ...

Life and career

Bridget D'Oyly Carte was the only daughter of Rupert D'Oyly Carte and the former Lady Dorothy Milner Gathorne-Hardy. She was educated in England and abroad and later at Dartington Hall in Devon, a school with a long musical tradition. In 1926, when she was only 18, she married her first cousin, John David Gathorne-Hardy, the fourth Earl of Cranbrook, but they divorced in 1931, after which she resumed her maiden name. Rupert DOyly Carte, born Hampstead, London, November 3, 1876, was an English hotelier and impresario, best known as proprietor of the DOyly Carte Opera Company from 1913 to 1948. ... The title of Earl of Cranbrook was created in 1892 for Lord Cranbrook, a retired Conservative politician. ...

From 1933 to 1939 she was an assistant to her father at the Savoy Hotel. Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, she undertook child welfare work, and continued with it until 1948. This article is about the Savoy Hotel in London. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ...

Managing the family interests

Bridget D'Oyly Carte was her father's sole heir (her only brother having died in a motoring accident), and when her father died in 1948, she inherited all his interests including the Savoy Hotel group and the family’s opera company, which presented the Savoy Operas from 1875 to 1982. The Savoy Operas are a series of operettas written by Gilbert and Sullivan. ...

She did not succeed Rupert D'Oyly Carte as chairman of the Savoy Hotel group, but became an active director, taking control of the furnishing and decoration departments (‘with considerable success’ according to The Times^[1]) and later became president of the group, in which she retained a large shareholding. The Times is a national newspaper published daily in the United Kingdom since 1785, and under its current name since 1788. ...

In running the opera company she took steps to keep the productions fresh, engaging designers to redesign the costumes and scenery. Peter Goffin, who had previously redesigned The Yeomen of the Guard for Rupert D'Oyly Carte, designed a unit set to facilitate touring, and produced new settings and costumes for Trial by Jury (1959), HMS Pinafore (1961), Patience (1957), Iolanthe (1961), The Mikado (1958 – settings only, most of the celebrated Charles Ricketts costumes being retained), Ruddigore (1948), and The Gondoliers (1958). Princess Ida was redesigned by James Wade in 1954.^[2] Trial by Jury is a comic Gilbert and Sullivan operetta in one act (the only single-act Savoy Opera). ... Wikisource has original text related to this article: HMS Pinafore H.M.S. Pinafore, or The Lass that Loved a Sailor, is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. ... Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Patience Patience is the ability to endure waiting, delay, or provocation without becoming annoyed or upset, or to persevere calmly when faced with difficulties. ... Iolanthe, or The Peer and the Peri, is a comic Gilbert and Sullivan operetta in two acts. ... The Mikado, or The Town of Titipu, is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations. ... Charles De Sousy Ricketts (1866 - 1931) was a versatile English artist and designer, best known for his work as book designer and typographer from 1896 to 1904 with the Vale Press, and his work in the theatre as a set designer. ... Ruddigore, or The Witchs Curse, is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. ... The Gondoliers, or The King of Barataria, is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. ... Wikisource has original text related to this article: Princess Ida Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Princess (Tennyson) Princess Ida, or Castle Adamant, is the eighth operetta written by Gilbert and Sullivan. ...

Setting up the charitable trusts

With the approaching end of the D’Oyly Carte monopoly on Gilbert and Sullivan performances, when the copyright on Gilbert’s words expired in 1961, Bridget D'Oyly Carte set up a charitable trust to continue to present the operas. She endowed the trust with her company's scenery, costumes, band parts and other assets, together with a cash endowment, and presented the operas on behalf of the trust until economic necessity forced the closure of the company in 1982. W. S. Gilbert Sir Arthur Sullivan Librettist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) collaborated on a series of fourteen comic operas in Victorian England between 1871 and 1896. ...

In 1972 Bridget D'Oyly Carte founded the D'Oyly Carte Charitable Trust – entirely separate from the D'Oyly Carte Opera Trust and the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company – supporting charitable causes in the fields of the arts, medical welfare and the environment. In 2001 the trust endowed the D'Oyly Carte Chair in Medicine and the Arts in the UK at King's College London with £2 million^[3].

Later years

In 1974 she was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain, and in 1975 was created DBE. She died in at her country home in Shrubs Wood, Buckinghamshire in April 1985. DBE can stand for: Dominet Bank Ekstraliga Dame of the British Empire, an honorific in the United Kingdom Categories: | ... Map of Bucks (1904) This article is about the English county. ...

Notes

External links

• Article on Carte family
• D'Oyly Carte Opera Company Website