Opera Scotland

Trial by Jury in Scotland

Posted 18 Mar 2025

Trial by Jury received its first performance in Scotland at Glasgow's Gaiety Theatre on 9 August 1876. 

The performers were Emily Soldene's English and Comic Opera Company.  Soldene had enjoyed a successful career in the music halls before switching her attention to operetta. However the star of the show was acknowledged to be Fred Sullivan, the elder brother of the composer, who created the part of the Learned Judge and after his early death was held to be a formative influence on the 'patter roles' in later Savoy operas.

Managerial assistance was provided by young Richard D'Oyly Carte. He had commissioned Trial by Jury from Gilbert and Sullivan as a curtain-raiser to precede his London production of Offenbach's La Périchole. Soldene was touring a different Offenbach work, Madame L'Archiduc, and Carte let her perform Trial with it, this time as an afterpiece to conclude the evening's entertainment.

Soldene's company continued to tour for several years, and by 1880, in Dundee, the repertoire included the first tour of Carmen as well as operettas by Lecocq and Genée. The Offenbach that preceded Trial was now Geneviève de Brabant, remembered for its famous Gendarmes' Duet.  Soldene's sister, Clara Vesey, still appeared as the Plaintiff. A new tenor had been recruited to sing Don José in Carmen, and he also sang the Defendant in Trial by Jury. This was one Signor Leli, newly arrived from Italy.  However he was not Italian, but a Scot, James Durward Lyall, born in Arbroath, and trained initially in Dundee before being sent to study in Milan.

When Carte, by now managing the hugely successful Gilbert and Sullivan series in London, needed to find a substitute tenor during the run of Pirates of Penzance, Leli seems to have come to mind.  The Italian name was deemed unsuitable, and there was already a successful tenor called Charles Lyall, so the surname of the 17th century Dutch portraitist Sir Peter Lely was adopted. Durward Lely created five leading tenor roles for Carte's company, including Nanki-Poo in The Mikado.  He went on to work with the Carl Rosa and toured to America with Adelina Patti's company.

The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company held the exclusive rights to perform the Savoy operas until the copyright expired in 1962, fifty years after Gilbert's death. During that period, when the company toured continuously with most of the works being performed, Trial by Jury was generally played before HMS Pinafore, and sometimes Pirates of Penzance.

In those early years, the leading roles were taken by many of the company principals, with names that would become familiar through the gramophone. Most of the Savoy operas were recorded under long-term musical director Isidore Godfrey, who still conducted them in Edinburgh in 1967.  Interpreters of the Learned Judge included Charles Workman (before the Great War), Leo Sheffield and Sydney Granville (between the wars), and John Reed (after the Second World War). While Trial was still seen in 1967 it had slipped from the repertoire before the company's last visit in 1980 - several of sets for productions had meantime been destroyed in a warehouse fire.

The D'Oyly Carte company was revived in 1988 and set up a new staging with Trial following after HMS Pinafire.  The production toured to the King's Theatre in Edinburgh in 1990.  Russell Craig's elaborate split-level set worked well for both operas, conducted by John Pryce-Jones. The cast included Derek Smith (Learned Judge), Sandra Dugdale (Plaintiff), Philip Creasy (Defendant), Lawrence Richard (Usher) and James Meek (Counsel).

The most recent professional production was a thoroughly enjoyable series of concert performances given by the Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus as part of their summer Proms seasons in Dundee, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow.  One of our greatest contemporary composers, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, long resident in Orkney, was a lifelong devotee of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. In 1990 he conducted a group of concerts - excerpts from several of the works to begin, and a performance of Trial by Jury after the interval. The cast was of top quality, with Richard Suart, now scheduled to return to the part some thirty-five years later in the Scottish Opera staging, as the Learned Judge.  Other soloists included Marilyn Hill Smith (Plaintiff), Bonaventura Bottone (Defendant), David Marsh (Usher) and Jonathan Veira (Counsel).