Talking About Trial By Jury

Opera North has a new production of Trial by Jury by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, as part of its season of Little Greats one-act operas. As I'm a Yorkshire lad myself (from Bradford), the author of a biography of Gilbert , and the Secretary of the W.S. Gilbert Society , I think it's more or less compulsory for me to say a few words about it. This is going to be purely from the Gilbert perspective, of course - because that's what I know. Sullivan's music is gorgeous, brilliant, hilarious, and perfectly matched to the words: it's just that I am not expert enough in music to comment on it in detail. W.S. Gilbert was a writer through and through. From 1861 onwards he was a professional cartoonist and comic writer for the humorous and satirical paper Fun (a then rival of Punch ). In November 1863 he was "called to the Bar" and for a few years after that he was technically a barrister, both in London and, for some time in 1866 and 1867, on the North...