Gilbert and Sullivan, perennially popular, longtime favourites of Scarborough audiences, always guaranteed to pack a concert hall - did just that at the Spa.

The second midweek concert of the summer season, billed as G&S: A La Carte, was dedicated to the music of Sir Arthur Sullivan and the words of Sir William S. Gilbert, the best known composer-librettist collaborators on the English stage. More than a hundred years after their deaths, they quite remarkably retain the cult following of those who enjoy the comic light opera originally written to be performed by the D’Oyly Carte Company, at London’s Savoy Theatre.

Tonight was given over to spirited selections from Ruddigore, Patience and Iolanthe, running through the full gamut of mock-plaintive arias, merry madrigals, robust ballads, not to mention the hilariously farcical patter songs for which the composers were perhaps most famous. On stage to tunefully present them were four fine singers, seasoned Savoyards all, very well known in light operatic circles.

Debra Morley, of the lovely soprano, needed little introduction to her audience, having graced the Spa Orchestra’s gala nights for the last fifteen years or more. She began in fine voice, delivering Rose Maybud’s melting lament from Ruddigore. She was soon joined by Philip Lee’s noble lyric tenor singing The battle’s roar is over, their voices blended beautifully as they pledge undying love, in a piece which you can take at its plaintive face value, if you like, or see as a mild Gilbertian dig at the stilted melodramatic conventions of Victorian courtship. It was the first of 4 memorable duets Debra shares with the acclaimed London-based tenor.

The imperishable So it really doesn’t matter patter piece (My Eyes Are Fully Open) offered immense comedic scope for the singers to showcase their acting skills whilst intoning breathlessly the tongue-twisting lyrics. Contralto Louise Crane excels in the role of Margaret, as delightfully dotty as a character out of Alice in Wonderland.

(An interesting side note for West Riding readers is that the rather unfathomable plot, involving a curse on the Murgatroyd family, may well have been based on the ancient family of that name, of East Riddlesden Hall, near Keighley, now owned by the National Trust.)

Whilst we were in high humour, Richard Suart, who has made several roles his own in Savoy operas with the revived D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, took the opportunity to reprise his pièce de résistance, the Lord High Executioner’s song, from The Mikado. In powerful baritone and with the facial expressions of, say, the great Aldwych farceur, Robertson Hare, to whom he bears some resemblance, he joyously adumbrated those marked out for his special attention - which in these modern times not only included the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but also the bosses of water companies, Daily Mail columnists, Megan and Harry, Elon Musk and, above all, Scarborough’s seagulls!

The first half had begun with the rousing overture from Pineapple Poll, a comic ballet devised in the early-1950s, expanding the plot of Gilbert’s Bab Ballads, set to Sullivan’s music (the moment its copyright had expired). It ended with selections from Patience, that devastatingly witty satire on the Aesthetic Movement of the late-Victorian period. Once again Suart all but steals the show as Bunthorne, the self-proclaimed ‘man of culture rare’ privately moved to confess that he’s an ‘aesthetic sham’.

The interval provided the opportunity to talk to two distinguished Austrian guests, music lovers from Innsbruck, Sabina Shweiger and her mother, Christine, who had come to Scarborough, inspired to see it by a German documentary which featured it. “I’m afraid I can’t always pick up all the word-play,” Sabina told me, “but we are moved by the music … and this great cultural experience.” “And we love this beautiful theatre in this beautiful town,” Christine added.

Another excerpt from the comic ballet gets the audience in step for a delightful second half, beginning with a couple of pieces from The Yeomen of the Guard. The four singers entertain with a full-throated rendition of Strange Adventure, savouring the black humour of the maiden wedded to a man she’s never seen who is about to be beheaded. It could only be Gilbert and Sullivan! By way of contrast they modulate into the immensely playful and, really, rather tender When a wooer goes a-wooing.


We close with excerpts from Iolanthe, an opera that is second nature to Louise who, as principal contralto with D’Oyly Carte, took the parts of both the Countess of Luxembourg and the Fairy Queen - whose lamenting love song Oh foolish fay, she shared with us, movingly. It is one of many items we warm to from this still-topical satire on the House of Lords, which was obviously considered an absurd anachronism as far back as 1882 when the opera premiered.

It was not only a night of fine voices. The singers, expressively dramatic in their delivery, were clearly natural Savoyards, as beautifully attuned and sensitively responsive to their material as to their audience. Behind them under the baton, as it were, of their pianist and musical director, Paul Laidlaw, was the renowned Spa Orchestra, whose brass section was augmented by guests, Andrew Dallimore, on trumpet, and Amelia Lewis, trombone.

A special word to the hard-working members of the string section, Rebecca Smith, violin, Diane Stewart, cello, and, not least, the bow work of Lisa Featherston, double bass. Occupied throughout in either sustaining the recitative in the parlando and patter passages, or melodiously underscoring the whole, she caught the eyes and ears.

For once Paul was allowed to concentrate entirely on music, the role of narrator being taken by Stephen Walker, who wittily made the best possible job of an almost impossible task - that of trying to explain the whys and wherefores, to use a Gilbertian expression, of their impossible plots.

The final pleasure of a night at the Spa is to come out into the salty air and take in the imposing grade-2 listed building under floodlights, before walking towards the fairy lights that stretch along the south bay and round the harbour. We should never neglect to praise what lies in our own backyard. What did W.S.G say about ‘the idiot with enthusiastic tone’ who ‘praises all centuries but this, and all countries but his own’!

The ladies from Innsbruck had come a long way for a night such as this.

G & S: A La Carte, a gala-night celebration of Gilbert and Sullivan, featuring singers, Debra Morley, Louise Crane, Philip Lee and Richard Suart, accompanied by the Spa Orchestra, was at the Scarborough Spa, on Wednesday, 6th August, 2025. Next Wednesday is A Viennese Whirl, glorious melodies from the dance capital of the world.