Pineapple Poll: Finale (arr. Mackerras)

arranged Mackerras

Pineapple Poll: Finale

‘The idea of transforming the music of Gilbert and Sullivan opera into a ballet score occured to me,’ Sir Charles Mackerras has written, ‘when I was playing in the orchestra for a Gilbert and Sullivan season in Australia. ”How wonderful it would be,” I thought, “to arrange the eminently danceable tunes into a sort of symphonic synthesis and score them for full orchestra. Although the idea had been in my head for several years, the opportunity to put theory into practice did not occur until 1951 at Sadler’s Wells, when I suggested it to John Cranko, a young choreographer from South Africa who was just begining to create attention with his ingenious and original balletic inventions.’

Cranko liked the idea, Sullivan’s music had just gone out of copyright, the Festival of Britain was about to begin, and - inspired by the example of Manuel Rosenthal’s arrangements of Offenbach operetta music for the ballet Gaité parisienne - Mackerras got to work. Gilbert’s The Bumboat Woman’s Story having been chosen as the scenario of the ballet, he duly completed a score nearly every bar of which is taken from one or another of the operas (the exception being a short extract from Sullivan’s early overture Di Ballo which he found he needed for the Finale). First performed by Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet in March 1951, Pineapple Poll was an immediate and lasting success. Entertaining though it is throughout, the most brilliant part of the ballet is the Finale, which celebrates the happy ending with an exuberantly scored parade of tunes from The Mikado, Trial by Jury, HMS Pinafore, Patience, Princess Ida, The Pirates of Penzance, Di Ballo and, as a triumphal last gesture, The Yoemen of the Guard.