Home Listening - Arthur Sullivan’s serious side

The Guardian 0

Sullivan’s The Light of the World sees the light of day at last. Plus, the Fidelio Trio and new music on Radio 3

• Arthur Sullivan will forever be associated with his longtime collaborator WS Gilbert and their effervescent Savoy operas, but there was always a serious side to Sullivan, a composer who longed to be recognised for more than The Mikado and HMS Pinafore.

In 1873, two years before the Savoy series began with Trial By Jury, Sullivan produced a full-scale oratorio, The Light of the World, telling the life of Christ and perhaps drawing inspiration from Holman Hunt’s massively popular picture of the same name. As the pre-Raphaelites drew on the past and looked to the future, so Sullivan makes reference to Britain’s musical past and reshapes it for a new age in a piece that, unlike Handel’s Messiah or the Bach Passions, replaces a spiritual representation of Christ with his physical, human story.