NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Rupert D'Oyly Carte

Rupert D'Oyly Carte, born Hampstead, London, November 3, 1876, was an English hotelier and impresario, best known as proprietor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1913 to 1948. Hampstead is a place in the London Borough of Camden and is close to Hampstead Heath. ... London (pronounced ) is the capital city of England and of the United Kingdom. ... November 3 is the 307th day of the year (308th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 58 days remaining. ... 1876 (MDCCCLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ... 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

Early life

Rupert D'Oyly Carte was the younger son of the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte and his first wife Blanche (née Prowse), who died in 1885. He was educated at Winchester College, noted as among the most intellectually rigorous of English public schools. He then spent some time with a firm of accountants before joining his father as an assistant in 1894. (The comprehensive Gilbert and Sullivan website, The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive[1] states that Rupert attended Magdalen College Oxford, but if he did so it could only have been fleetingly if the above dates, taken from Who’s Who are correct.) Richard DOyly Carte (May 3, 1844 – April 3, 1901) was a London theatrical impresario during the latter half of the nineteenth century. ... Winchester College is a boys public school in the city of Winchester in Hampshire, in the south of England. ... Librettist W. S. Gilbert (1836â€“1911) and composer Arthur Sullivan (1842â€“1900) collaborated on a series of fourteen comic operas in Victorian England between 1871 and 1896. ... Magdalen College could be Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalene College, Cambridge This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Oxford is a city and local government district in Oxfordshire, England, with a population of 134,248 (2001 census). ...

In a newspaper interview given in the year of his death he recalled that as a young man he was entrusted, during his father’s illness, with helping W.S. Gilbert with the first revival of The Yeomen of the Guard at the Savoy Theatre^[1]. Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (November 18, 1836 - May 29, 1911) was a British dramatist and librettist best known for his operatic collaborations with the composer Arthur Sullivan. ... The Yeomen of the Guard, or The Merryman and his Maid, is the eleventh of Gilbert and Sullivans operettas. ... Savoy Theatre London, December 2003 The Savoy Theatre, which opened on 10 October 1881, was built by Richard DOyly Carte (1844 - 1901) on the site of the old Savoy Palace in London as a showcase for the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, which became known as the Savoy Operas...

Rupert's father, Richard, died in 1901, and Rupert's stepmother, the former Helen Lenoir, assumed full control of most of the family businesses, which she had increasingly controlled during Richard's decline. Rupert's older brother, Lucas, a barrister, was not involved in the family businesses and died of tuberculosis in 1907.

Becoming head of the family business

Rupert took over his late father’s role as Chairman of the Savoy Hotel in 1903 when he was aged 27 and proved an enterprising and successful businessman, adding Claridges, the Berkeley and Simpsons-in-the-Strand to the family's hotel and restaurant portfolio. In late 1906, Helen Boulter (Rupert's stepmother had remarried) acquired the performing rights to the Gilbert and Sullivan operas from Gilbert (she already had Sullivan's) and staged a repertory season at the Savoy Theatre, reviving the opera company, which had been in decline after 1901. In 1911, the company hired J. M. Gordon, who had been a member of the company under Gilbert's direction, as stage manager and later director. Gordon, under Carte's direction, preserved the company's traditions in exacting detail for 28 years. This article is about the Savoy Hotel in London. ... Claridges is a luxury hotel in Mayfair, central London. ... SIMPSONS-IN-THE-STRAND is one of the most reknowned restaurants, and banquetting suites, in London. ... Librettist W. S. Gilbert (1836â€“1911) and composer Arthur Sullivan (1842â€“1900) collaborated on a series of fourteen comic operas in Victorian England between 1871 and 1896. ...

In 1907, Rupert married Lady Dorothy Gathorne-Hardy (the daughter of the second Earl of Cranbrook), with whom he had a son, Michael, and a daughter, Bridget. Michael was killed in a motor accident in Switzerland in 1932.

In 1913 on the death of his stepmother, Rupert succeeded to the remainder of his father’s estate, including the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. He later recalled, "I went and watched the Company playing at a rather dreary theatre down in the suburbs of London. I thought the dresses looked dowdy.... I formed the view that new productions should be prepared, with scenery and dresses to the design of first class artists who understood the operas but who would produce a décor attractive to the new generation."^[2]

Innovations and renovations at the Savoy

In the succeeding years, he put this aim into effect, hiring, most famously, Charles Ricketts RA to redesign The Gondoliers and The Mikado, the costumes for the latter, in 1926, being retained by all subsequent designers until the closure of the company in 1982. Other redesigns were by Percy Anderson, George Sheringham, and Peter Goffin, a protégé of Bridget D’Oyly Carte. For London seasons, Rupert engaged guest conductors, first Geoffrey Toye, then Malcolm Sargent, who examined Sullivan’s manuscript scores and purged the orchestral parts of accretions^[3] So striking was the orchestral sound thus produced by Sargent that the press thought he had retouched the scores, and Carte had the pleasant duty of writing to correct their error. "…the details of the orchestration sounded so fresh that some of the critics thought them actually new… the opera was played last night exactly as written by Sullivan." 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. ... The Gondoliers, or The King of Barataria, is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. ... 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. ... Sir (Harold) Malcolm (Watts) Sargent (April 29, 1895 â€“ October 3, 1967) was a British conductor, organist and composer. ...

Carte also redesigned the Savoy Theatre. On June 3, 1929 the Savoy closed, and it was completely rebuilt to designs by Frank A. Tugwell with décor by Basil Ionides. The old house had three tiers; the new one had two. The seating capacity was increased from 986 to 1158. The theatre reopened 135 days later on October 21, 1929,^[4] with The Gondoliers, designed by Ricketts and conducted by Sargent. June 3 is the 154th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (155th in leap years), with 211 days remaining. ... 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... October 21 is the 294th day of the year (295th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 71 days remaining. ... 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Gondoliers, or The King of Barataria, is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. ...

Finally, Carte nurtured a long association with Sadler's Wells until he died in 1948. The London Coliseum, home of the English National Opera The English National Opera (ENO) is Londons second opera company, after the Royal Opera at Covent Garden. ...

Later years

Rupert and Lady Dorothy were divorced in 1941. Who’s Who rather unusually records that he obtained a decree nisi, in contrast to the usual conduct of upper class divorce in England at the time, when the husband would normally allow the wife to divorce him rather than vice versa (regardless of the circumstances). The divorce did not end Lady Dorothy’s association with the opera company: several photographs of her at D’Oyly Carte events were printed over the years in the magazine The Savoyard^[5]

Rupert D’Oyly Carte died suddenly at the Savoy Hotel on September 12, 1948. Portal:Currentevents September 12 is the 255th day of the year (256th in leap years). ... 1948 (MCMXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1948 calendar). ...

Surname

There seems little doubt that the family’s surname is Carte, D’Oyly being a given name. Leslie Bailey refers to his interviews with ‘Mr Carte,’ and later Kenneth Sandford recalled a conversation with the company manager in which Dame Bridget, before she received the accolade, was referred to as ‘Miss Carte’. ^[6]

Psmith

The English comic novelist P. G. Wodehouse based a character on Rupert D’Oyly Carte. In the introduction to his novel Something Fresh, Wodehouse says that Psmith (originally named Rupert, then Ronald) was ‘based more or less faithfully on Rupert D’Oyly Carte, son of the Savoy theatre man. He was at school with a cousin of mine, and my cousin happened to tell me about his monocle, his immaculate clothes and his habit, when asked by a master how he was of replying, “Sir, I grow thinnah and thinnah”.’ Dame Bridget D’Oyly Carte, however, believed that the Wykehamist schoolboy described to Wodehouse was not her father but his elder brother Lucas.^[7] Lucas was also at Winchester. P. G. Wodehouse, pictured in 1904, became famous for his complex plots, ingenious wordplay, and prolific output Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse KBE (October 15, 1881 â€“ February 14, 1975) (pronounced WOOD-house) was an English comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success for more than seventy years. ... Ronald Eustace Psmith (or Rupert Psmith, as his is called in the first two books in which he appears) is a character in several of the comic novels of P. G. Wodehouse. ...

Residence

Rupert and Lady Dorothy D'Oyly Carte had a country house built for them in Devon between Paignton and Brixham, named Coleton Fishacre, now owned by the National Trust. After her parents divorced, Bridget D’Oyly Carte took over the house, to which her father, who lived in a suite at the Savoy Hotel, would come for long weekends. Devon is a large county in South West England, bordering on Cornwall to the west, Dorset and Somerset to the east. ... Location within the British Isles Paignton seafront in the late evening, at high tide Paignton (pronounced Paynton) is an English coastal town on the English Riviera near Torquay, in the county of Devon. ... Location within the British Isles Brixham is a small town in the county of Devon in the southwest of England. ... The standard of the National Trust The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, usually known as The National Trust, is a British preservation organization. ...

References

External links

Notes

^ New York Post, 7 January 1948. The newspaper report states that this was when he was 22, but in fact the first revival of Yeomen was in May 1897, when Rupert D’Oyly Carte was only 20
^ Leslie Baily, The Gilbert and Sullivan Book, London, Cassel & Co, 1956 edition
^ Sargent’s successor as musical director, Isidore Godfrey, recalled, in The Gilbert & Sullivan Journal, September 1964, that when he joined the New Company he played the harmonium in the orchestra, but no harmonium parts are called for in any of the Savoy opera manuscript scores.
^ Savoy Theatre programme note, September 2000
^ e.g. the January 1972 issue, in which Lady Dorothy (by then Lady Dorothy de Verteuil) occupies a prominent place along with her daughter Bridget D’Oyly Carte and leading bass baritone Kenneth Sandford at a retirement party at Grims Dyke hotel.
^ ‘Damn it all, Kenneth, Miss Carte provides the theatre, the orchestra, the stage, the costumes, the scenery, and the props – all you have to do is damn well go on stage.’ – Merely Corroborative Detail, Roberta Morrell, Leicester, Scotia Press, 1999
^ Frances Donaldson, P G Wodehouse, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1982

Categories: People associated with Gilbert and Sullivan | English theatre managers and producers | Opera managers | 1876 births | 1948 deaths The New York Post is the 13th-oldest[citation needed] newspaper published in the United States and the oldest to have been published continually as a daily. ... Isidore Godfrey (born London 27 Sep 1900, died London 12 Sep 1977) was musical director of the DOyly Carte Opera Company from 1929 to 1968. ... Kenneth Sandford, (June 28, 1924 â€“ September 19, 2004) was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the DOyly Carte Opera Company. ...

Contents

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