The Cultural Context for The Mikado:

Music, Theatre, Literature, Art

Music

"The major composers are Borodin, Brahms, Bruckner, Debussy, Franck, Gounod, Liszt, Mahler, Massenet, Offenbach, Rimsky-Korsakov, J. Strausss, R. Strauss, Tchaikovsky and Verdi" (New York City Opera).

Theatre

Ibsen, Shaw, Strindberg. Music Halls. Opera: Debussy, Massenet, Verdi.

Literature

Because Great Britain was the world empire at this point, because China and India were part of that empire, and because of the recent "opening" of Japan to interactions with the west, a large body of "orientalist" literature existed in England at the end of the century. ("Orientalist," obviously, conflates all the various cultures into one notion, a conflation that can be seen in Gilbert's mixing of Japanese and Chinese names, for example. The term is Edward Said's.) Some contemporary works include the following:

Byron's "Oriental Tales" are set in the Middle East; Childe Harold sets middle-eastern over western culture in Canto II of Childe Harold's Pilgrimmage. "The Corsair" (1814) has had a long career as a ballet.

"Among the leading figures in literature are Ibsen, Hardy, Hugo, James, Melville, Rimbaud, Shaw, Strindberg, Tennyson, Tolstoy, Twain, Whitman and Zola" (New York City Opera).

Twain's Huckleberry Finn was published in 1886, the year after the first performances of The Mikado.

Art

"Cezanne, Millais, Money, Pissarro, Renoir, Rodin, Seurat, Sargent, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and whistler are active in the visual arts" (New York City Opera).

To Act I or Act II of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.

To the homepage of this Mikado website.

Suggestions, contributions, criticisms, questions? Email Sharon Cogdill.

(c) Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 Sharon Cogdill, dramaturg for this production and author of this website.

College of Fine Arts and Humanities

St. Cloud State University

This URL: http://web.stcloudstate.edu/scogdill/mikado/cultcontext.html.

Created: 10 May 1998.

Last update: 24 June 2001.