Shorter Notice
Gilbert and Sullivan and Their World Leslie Baily (Thames and Hudson. £2.25.) Very much in the way of a postscript to the author's giant book on the subject back in 1952, this much slenderer volume is especially well-suited to the current Thames and Hudson policy of giving visual as well as textual realisation to corners of the artistic past. It has one hundred and forty three illustrations, or just over one a page, and it says something for Mr Baily's percipience that although fishing in such familiar waters, he manages to make a great many of the visuals look fresh and interesting. As to factual amendments to, or critical amplifications of his work of twenty one years ago, the author offers none, and is content to present the conventional Savoyard picture of London popular music a hundred years ago. This might have been a good opportunity to explore a few neglected aspects of the whole Gilbert-and-Sullivan industry, particularly the curiously complacent inconoclasm of Gilbert himself. However, if the book gives no new interpretations, it can at least claim to give an unshakeably solid summary of the old ones, for which reason it can be recommended as the ideal introduction for beginners to the subject. Always assumed of course, that there are any.
BG..
Previous page
