Opera Scotland

Trial by Jury 1880Soldene English and Comic Opera Company

Read more about the opera Trial by Jury

Trial By Jury was revived by Emily Soldene by arrangement with her friend Richard D'Oyly Carte, to act as a make-weight for Geneviève de Brabant. At its original run in London in 1875, it served the same purpose for La Périchole. She had first performed it in 1876, a few month's after its London debut, so it was clearly a lasting success, even before the D'Oylu Carte management reclaimed it.

Clara Vesey, sister of Emily Soldene, had created the role of the Plaintiff in London.

The tenor was billed as 'Signor Leli'. His real name was James Durward Lyall.  Born in Arbroath, he had grown up near Glen Shee before being sent to study in Italy, where he sang for a few seasons.  On his return, he joined the Soldene tour before transferring to the Carte management. At this point his Italian styling was seen to be unsuitably foreign.  There was already a successfully active tenor called Charles Lyall, so W S Gilbert suggested adopting the appropriately English (actually Dutch) surname of the seventeenth-century portraitist Sir Peter Lely.  The new name stuck. Durward Lely was here having his first encounter with a work by Gilbert and Sullivan, at a time when no-one could have known how important his collaboration with them would be in future years = five new roles.