No never....

As Jonathan Miller's Black and White Mikado is enjoying an anniversary revival at the ENO, here is a link to an interesting article that - although it came out in The Telegraph last August - is still well worth the read. Miller, despite his huge success with his production, had desribed G&S as "the most boringly self-satisfied form of English drivel", prompting a strong defence from Rupert Christiansen in his article 'Never (no never) mock the genius of Gilbert & Sullivan':

'G&S isn't a deadweight of smugness – a totemic survival of the myth of Victorian respectability – but a living tradition that remains at the heart and root of just about every musical now playing in the West End or on Broadway. It is built on Gilbert's genius for light rhymed verse and Sullivan's genius for melody, which combine in a fusion of text and music that has rarely been equalled, let alone surpassed.'

 And so say all of us! Read his full article online at The Telegraph.
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