Cellier, François: Captain Billy. Rental

Two full scores (conductor and producer), one vocal score
(producer), and instrumental material

Please contact the Hire Library for further details.

The publication of François Cellier’s Captain Billy and Ernest Ford’s Mr Jericho sheds light on a little-known aspect of late-Victorian theatre. These one-act operettas were produced at the Savoy Theatre and written to precede as curtain-raisers the main, full-length work of the evening.

Richard D’Oyly Carte did much to cultivate the genre, initiated by Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury in 1875. Though all but forgotten today, the composers François Cellier (1849–1914) and Ernest Ford (1858–1919) had strong connections with Sullivan. Captain Billy (1891) is the swashbuckling tale of a pirate who is reunited with his nephew, a young foundling he lost in ‘the great desert of Sahara’ as a baby, and ultimately finds redemption in a new life as a travelling soap-salesman. Contains hornpipes!