Sullivan Overture to the Sapphire Necklace

 Day 131

Sullivan Overture to The Sapphire Necklace

RTE Concert Orchestra

Andrew Penny

Sullivan was the subject of my PhD thesis so I am familiar with most of his output but I had not heard this before. The Sapphire Necklace is a bit of a mystery. It was written in the early 1860s (it is his first opera) but although it seems to have been finished it was never performed and the score has disappeared. A couple of songs were published and the overture survives in piano-conductor’s score of military band arrangement. There have been various attempts at orchestrating it - this one is by Roderic Spencer. 

The piece shows clearly that the young Sullivan was a highly competent Leipzig-school composer. The beginning is dramatic but it then develops into something which is recognisable as Sullivanesque. Who knows what the history of English music might have been had the opera been performed. Would Sullivan have developed into a major composer of something equivalent to French Opèra Comique. Something like an English Bizet or Messager? An intriguing thought.