Premiere and reception

he first night was not as successful as the other Savoy opera premieres because of controversy over the title and the revivification of the ghosts, and reservations about the plot and music. According to the St James's Gazette, "The first act was well received by the audience. Number after number was rapturously encored, and every droll sally of dialogue was received with a shout of appreciative mirth."^[19][20] The interval was long (a half hour) as the elaborate picture gallery needed to be set up, but D'Oyly Carte had anticipated this and had printed indulgence slips which were distributed. It was marked by noisy hubbub when Lord Randolph Churchill was spotted in the crowd, but a loud shout of "No politics!" brought relative calm.^[21] The second act, however, ended badly. On 23 January 1887, under the heading "Their First Flat Failure; The First Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Not a Success", The New York Times reported, "When the curtain finally fell there was hissing – the first ever heard in the Savoy Theatre. The audience even voiced sentiments in words and there were shouts and cries such as these: 'Take off this rot!' 'Give us The Mikado!'" The paper added, "(T)he name is decidedly against it."^[22]

George Grossmith as Robin Oakapple

The performance was hampered by an off night for Leonora Braham as Rose Maybud and by George Grossmith's usual first night jitters, a week after which he fell dangerously ill^[23] and had to be replaced by his understudy, Henry Lytton, for almost three weeks.^[24] Sullivan noted in his diary, "Production of Ruddigore [sic] at Savoy. Very enthusiastic up to the last 20 minutes, then the audience showed dissatisfaction."^[25]

Critical reception

On the day of the premiere, The New York Times, whose correspondent attended the dress rehearsal the day before, warned, "The music is not up to the standard of Sir Arthur Sullivan. As a whole it is largely commonplace ... Gilbert's dialogue in the first act is here and there very amusing, but in the second it is slow and tedious."^[26] The press generally agreed with the Savoy audience that the second act of the premiere was inferior to the first. The Times opined that "the fun which runs alive in the first act runs completely dry in the second, which is long and tedious, and winds up with an anti-climax of inanity."^[27] The Times praised both the libretto and the music of the first act ("Everything sparkles with the flashes of Mr. Gilbert's wit and the graces of Sir Arthur Sullivan's melodiousness... one is almost at a loss what to select for quotation from an embarrassment of humorous riches.") but rated the score, as a whole, "of a fair average kind, being not equal to The Sorcerer but certainly superior to Princess Ida."^[27] Punch also thought the second act weak: "The idea of the burlesque is funny to begin with, but not to go on with".^[28] The Pall Mall Gazette thought the libretto "as witty and fanciful as any of the series" though "the second half of the last act dragged a little."^[29] The New York Times reported, "the second (act) fell flat from the beginning and was a gloomy and tedious failure."^[22] According to the St. James's Gazette, "gradually the enthusiasm faded away and the interest of the story began to flag, until at last the plot seemed within an ace of collapsing altogether."

Bond and Barrington: Margaret discloses one of her "odd thoughts" to Despard.

The Era commented, "the libretto as a whole is very weak and loosely constructed."^[30] Fun asked, "Could it be possible that we were to have a dull play from the cleverest and most original humorist of the day? Alas! It could – it was."^[31] According to the Pall Mall Budget, "the players seemed to be nervous from the start. Miss Braham forgot her lines, and was not in voice. Mr. (George) Grossmith was in the same plight". The Times also criticised Braham, stating that she "acted most charmingly, but sang persistently out of tune". The staging was also criticised: The Times stated, "The ghost scene ... of which preliminary notices and hints of the initiated had led one to expect much, was a very tame affair."^[27] The Era thought Sullivan's score "far from being fresh and spontaneous as is his wont".^[30]
Not all newspapers were adversely critical. The Sunday Express headlined its review "Another Brilliant Success." The Sunday Times agreed and stated that the work was "received with every demonstration of delight by a distinguished and representative audience." The Observer also praised the piece, though allowing that it "lacks something of the sustained brilliance" of The Mikado.^[32] The Daily News applauded the innovation of Sullivan (who conducted, as usual, on the first night), of conducting with a baton tipped with a small incandescent light.^[20] Scholar Reginald Allen suggested that the reviews in the Sunday papers may have been better than the others because their critics, facing deadlines (the premiere was on Saturday night, and finished late because of the long interval), may not have stayed to the end.^[25] Fun, having disparaged the libretto, said of the music, "Sir Arthur has surpassed himself".^[31] The Pall Mall Gazette praised the "charming melodies, fresh and delightful as ever"; The Daily News wrote that "Mr Gilbert retains in all its fulness his unique facility for humorous satire and whimsical topsy-turveydom" and praised Sullivan's "melodic genius which never fails".^[29] Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper said, "Sir Arthur Sullivan must be congratulated."^[33]

Subsequent reviews and reception

Programme from the original production before the name change to Ruddigore

Programme for the original production after the change of title from Ruddygore

Subsequent reviews, written after Gilbert and Sullivan had renamed the show and made other changes, were generally more favourable. A week after the premiere, the Illustrated London News praised the work, the actors and both Gilbert and, especially, Sullivan: "Sir Arthur Sullivan has eminently succeeded alike in the expression of refined sentiment and comic humour. In the former respect, the charm of graceful melody prevails; while, in the latter, the music of the most grotesque situations is redolent of fun."^[2] On 1 February 1887, The Theatre wrote, "There can be no doubt that by its admirable production of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan's latest work the Savoy management has scored another of those shining and remunerative successes that its enterprise, intelligence, and good taste have repeatedly achieved – and merited."^[34] A week later, The Academy reckoned that Ruddygore (as it was still called in the review) was probably not so good as Patience or The Mikado, nor as "fresh" as H.M.S. Pinafore, but "it is better than ... Princess Ida, the Pirates, and Iolanthe".^[35] The Musical Times called the work "one of the most brilliant examples which the associated art of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan has brought into existence," and said that Sullivan had "written some of his freshest and most delightful melodies."^[36] However, in the view of The Manchester Guardian, reviewing the Manchester premiere in March 1887, "The weakness of his central idea has led Mr Gilbert into extravagance without wit and parody without point."^[37]
On 5 February 1887, The New York Times reported the change of name to Ruddigore. "In consequence of the criticisms on the piece, the second act has been changed. The pictures, with the exception of one, no longer come down from their frames. The houses are packed, as they always are in London, but the opinion is universal that the thing will be a worse failure in the provinces and America than Iolanthe."^[38] In a letter cabled to The New York Times and printed on 18 February, Richard D'Oyly Carte denied that the piece was a failure, stating that box office receipts were running ahead of the same time period for The Mikado, despite the absence of the ailing Grossmith, who was by then recovering.^[39] He acknowledged that there had been "isolated hisses" on the first night because some audience members did not like the reappearance of the ghosts or a reference to the "Supreme Court" (according to D'Oyly Carte, misunderstood as "Supreme Being") but asserted that both objections had been addressed by the removal of the offending material, and that audience reaction had been otherwise enthusiastic. He added, "The theatre is crammed nightly."^[40]

Geraldine Ulmar as Rose in New York

The American productions met with mixed success. The demand for tickets for the first night was so great that the management of the Fifth Avenue Theatre sold them by public auction.^[41] A "large and brilliant" audience assembled for the New York premiere on 21 February 1887. "After the first half of the first act there was a palpable diminution of interest on the part of the audience, and it must be admitted that there were times during the course of the evening when people were bored." While the critic had praise for many members of the cast and felt the production would improve once the cast was more familiar with the work, the reviewer concluded that "Gilbert and Sullivan have failed."^[42] On the other hand, the American tour, beginning in Philadelphia six days later, met with a much more favourable audience reaction. "That the opera is a great success here and another "Mikado" in prospective popularity there can be no question.... The general verdict is that Sullivan never composed more brilliant music, while Gilbert's keen satire and pungent humor is [sic] as brilliant as ever."^[43] During the summer of 1886, Braham secretly married J. Duncan Young, previously a principal tenor with the company. In early 1887, shortly into the run of Ruddigore, Braham informed Carte that she was pregnant with her second child, a daughter, who would be born on 6 May.^[44] Geraldine Ulmar, the Rose in the New York cast, was summoned to London to take over the role.^[45]
Gilbert ranked Ruddigore along with The Yeomen of the Guard and Utopia, Limited as one of his three favourite Savoy operas.^[46] Later assessments have found much merit in the piece.^[23] After it was revived by the D'Oyly Carte Opera company in 1920, the work remained in their regular repertory, and it has generally been given a place in the regular rotation of other Gilbert and Sullivan repertory companies. By 1920, in a reappraisal of the piece, Samuel Langford wrote in The Manchester Guardian that "the gruesome strain is the real Gilbertian element" but "the opera has abundant charm among its more forbidding qualities".^[47] In 1934 Hesketh Pearson rated the libretto among Gilbert's best.^[48] In a 1937 review, The Manchester Guardian declared,

It is incomprehensible that Ruddigore should ever have been considered less attractive than the other comic operas in the Savoy series. The libretto gives us Gilbert at his wittiest, and in the music we hear Sullivan not only in his most tuneful vein but also as a master of more subtle rhythms than he commands elsewhere. Moreover, the parody is one that all can enjoy to the full, for here the satire is not pointed at a coterie, nor at this or that æsthetic movement, but at the absurdities of a melodramatic tradition which is nearly as old as the stage itself.^[49]

In 1984, Arthur Jacobs rated Ruddigore "One of the weaker of Gilbert's librettos, it was seen (especially after the freshness of invention in The Mikado) to be rather obviously relying on brushed-up ideas.... The plot is supposedly a burlesque of what was 'transpontine' melodrama.... But that brand of melodrama was itself hardly alive enough to be made fun of. As the Weekly Dispatch put it: 'If stage work of the kind caricatured in Ruddygore or The Witch's Curse is not extinct, it is relegated to regions unfrequented by the patrons of Mr D'Oyly Carte's theatre'."^[50] Nevertheless, the show has made its way into popular culture in several ways. At least three murder mysteries concern the show. Murder and Sullivan by Sarah Hoskinson Frommer, which involves a production of Ruddigore; Ruddy Gore by Kerry Greenwood concerns murders taking place during a 1920s revival of the opera. The Ghost's High Noon by John Dickson Carr quotes the song of the same name from Ruddigore. In "Runaround", a story in I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov, a robot, while in a state similar to drunkenness, sings snippets of "There Grew a Little Flower" from Ruddigore. In the Doctor Who Big Finish Productions audio, Doctor Who and the Pirates, songs from Ruddigore and other G&S shows, are parodied. In the law case of Banks v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs, 634 A.2d 433, 441 fn. 1 (D.C. 1993), the judge cites Robin's admonition to "blow your own trumpet".