Isidore Godfrey

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Isidore Godfrey (September 27, 1900 – September 12, 1977) was musical director of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for 39 years, from 1929 to 1968. He conducted most of the Company's performances during that period, except for a few London seasons when Malcolm Sargent was guest conductor and brief periods in the summers of 1947 and 1948 when Boyd Neel filled in as guest conductor.

1 Life and career
2 Critical reception
3 Later years
4 Touring with an opera company
5 Recordings
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Life and career

Godfrey was born in London and trained at the Guildhall School of Music. He was married to two members of the company — first to soprano chorister Marguerite Kynaston (they later divorced), and later to soprano (later contralto) principal Ann Drummond-Grant in 1940. After Drummond-Grant died, Godfrey married a third time in 1961.

He joined the D'Oyly Carte Company as accompanist and assistant musical director of its smaller touring company in April 1925. He moved to the main Company in May 1926 and in 1929 took over as musical director on the retirement of Harry Norris.

Godfrey conducted all the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, plus Cox and Box in performance and for recordings, except Utopia Limited and The Grand Duke, though he recorded excerpts from the former. (Rupert D'Oyly Carte had considered reviving Utopia in the 1920s, but abandoned the idea.)

[edit] Critical reception

Godfrey was widely admired for his consistent skill in giving Sullivan’s scores their essential joie de vivre. Some typical reviews read:

"...conducted in sparkling fashion by Isidore Godfrey" (The Gramophone)
"Isidore Godfrey conducts with marvellous spirit and lift... his inimitable sprightly self" (The Penguin Guide to CDs)
"...a brilliant young assistant named Isidore Godfrey whom I realised at once was made of the right stuff for Sullivan" (Sir Malcolm Sargent)
"...the animation, command and sheer genius for keeping things up to the mark of this most devoted servant of the tradition." (Philip Hope-Wallace of The Guardian).

Another Guardian writer who had played in the pit for Godfrey recorded that "he was like Henry Wood in that if you watched him you couldn’t come in wrong."

[edit] Later years

Godfrey was awarded the O.B.E. in June 1965. He retired from the Company in February 1968 and was succeeded as musical director by his deputy, James Walker (formerly of Decca Records). Ill-health prevented him from making many guest appearances after his retirement, but he conducted H.M.S. Pinafore during the company’s centenary season in 1975. He died in London just shy of his 77th birthday.

[edit] Touring with an opera company

Godfrey brought the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company on many tours during his four decades as music director, including eleven to America. The company did not travel with a band but instead used orchestra players that it hired in America, or wherever it was travelling:

...we would pick up perhaps eight orchestral players in the first town, take them with us on the tour and make up the orchestra with local players from each of the towns we visited.... On one occasion, I was rehearsing the Mikado overture when I noticed that one of the double-basses was plucking the strings in the opening bars. I pointed out that it was not to be played pizzicato but arco, with the bow. "Yeah", he said. "But I haven't got a bow." That's how it was sometimes! (Ayre, p. 96)

[edit] Recordings

Godfrey's first recording with D'Oyly Carte was the 1933 Sorcerer highlights for HMV, followed by his first complete opera, The Mikado in 1936. When the Company returned to the recording studio after World War II, Godfrey led a series of eleven complete recordings from 1949–55 for Decca, comprising all of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas in its repertory.

From 1957–66, the Company re-recorded its full repertory for Decca, this time in stereo, adding the first professional recording of Cox and Box and highlights from Utopia Limited. Godfrey once again conducted the entire series, except for Princess Ida and The Yeomen of the Guard, for which Malcolm Sargent was guest conductor.

His final recordings for the Company were a film of The Mikado in 1966 and the Company's second stereo recording of Pirates in 1968.

[edit] References

Ayre, Leslie (1972). The Gilbert & Sullivan Companion. London: W.H. Allen & Co Ltd. Introduction by Martyn Green.
Scowcroft, Philip: "The Godfreys" in The Gaiety Annual (2002) pp. 19-22.
Reeves, Ken: "The Godfrey Identification Parade" in The Gaiety Annual (2002) pp. 23-28.