The Theatre and Performance collections of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum have catalogued and digitised the designs and models which form part of the extensive archive of the D’Oyly Carte Company.
Established by Richard D’Oyly Carte, the company worked extensively (but not exclusively) with W S Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, writers of comic operettas in the second half of the 19th century.
Such was the worldwide popularity of the performances put on by the trio that D’Oyly Carte went on to build The Savoy Theatre to stage their work.
The material in the archive was given to the museum by the granddaughter of Richard D’Oyly Carte and is composed of more than a thousand items.
Prompt scripts, correspondence, photographs, costume and set designs, legal documents, business books, cuttings albums and music sheets are to be found in the collection, along with a marzipan pirate’s hat and other oddities.
The online digitised material is now available for students, historians and Gilbert and Sullivan enthusiasts from all over the world.
The challenges of cataloguing the collection, most of which was housed at The Savoy (a hotel built by D’Oyly Carte), have been written about by Theatre and Performance collections Assistant Curator Veronica Castro and Curator of Popular Entertainment Catherine Haill has written an introduction to the archive.
The items in the D’Oyly Carte archive and the contents of other V&A Collections may be found online via a search portal.