ABSTRACT
Arthur Sullivan's musical reputation has been created almost entirely through his collaboration with W. S. Gilbert in the string of comic operas that has ensured his continued and apparently undying fame. While Sullivan's use of parody, allusion, prosody and text-setting has received excellent consideration from scholars such as Gervase Hughes, Robert Fink and James Brooks Kuykendall, the questions of musical-dramatic design have received little scrutiny. This chapter looks at the larger musical design of Sullivan's comic operas and formulates some of the dramaturgical principles at work in them. It examines the role of music in unfolding the work's narrative and articulating the plot's dramatic complication and resolution; the relationship between music and dialogue and the question of musical continuity, as seen in the construction of larger musical expanses such as the extended finale structures encountered in many of the later operas; the use of musical recall; and music's role in the articulation of dramatic time.
