Bowing to great Mikado

English opera director Peter Mulloy pays homage to Gilbert and Sullivan's master work by making sure his production is authentic in every detail, writes PETER CALDER.

Had it not been for a fanciful, fictional emperor of Japan, Peter Mulloy might have been singing in the great opera houses of Europe.

He has a big handful of good operatic roles under his belt - Papageno, Figaro and Faust, to name three in a crammed CV - and he was, he says, "doing all right" when in 1998 he was asked to preside over the 125th anniversary relaunch of Britain's oldest opera company, Carl Rosa Opera.

The piece they chose was the most delicious fruit of the partnership between William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan - the timeless tale of small-town scheming and thwarted plans called The Mikado.

But he and the company plainly did it too well. Before the London run closed "all these theatres came to see us and asked to book a season." Thus was born a touring opera company which this year will be on the road for 47 weeks, including 10 days in Auckland in August as part of a seven-city Down Under tour.

The production will star Peter Ellis (Chief Superintendent Brownlow in television's The Bill) in the title role of the bloodthirsty emperor of Japan whose edicts wreak havoc in the town of Titipu and particularly in the life of the mild-mannered town executioner Ko-Ko, the Basil Fawlty of the Victorian musical theatre.

It's a role that Mulloy has played in amateur and professional productions, but - barring unforeseen accidents when he may have to stand in - he won't be treading the boards here.

He has been the artistic director of Carl Rosa - a company which staged many lesser operettas in London before Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy Operas eclipsed them in popularity - ever since it restarted in 1998. And he has been uncompromising in his insistence on fidelity to the original intentions of composers and librettists.

When he stopped in Auckland for a couple of days to check out the venue - the refurbished Civic which he pronounced "fabulous" - the energetic Englishman was happy to explain why.

"When I was asked to be the artistic director of Carl Rosa I said I'd only do it if I could do it my way. And they said: 'What's your way?' and I said: 'Gilbert and Sullivan's way.' I'm like the Messiah to Gilbert and Sullivan fanatics. They come and kiss my hand."

Solid research underlies the approach - in directing The Mikado, Mulloy uses Gilbert's own notes in his authenticated prompt book.

But he is driven by a sense that, as we enter the 21st century, audiences have an appetite for the pre-modern, as the revival of interest in Oscar Wilde attests.

"We've become the people's opera company in England," he says, "because we offer opera in traditional style as the composer intended it.

"At home we've seen a lot of productions which are grey - they're lit by a 40-watt bulb and everyone's wearing grey boiler suits and climbing galvanised steel ladders. It's been done so wild and wacky that we've got an audience now that doesn't know what a real production of La Traviata or La Boheme is like."

Or, indeed, The Mikado, probably the best-loved of the G&S canon. It was no accident that Mike Leigh's Oscar-winning film Topsy Turvy focused on it and, in a literal sense, Mulloy and his company are bringing the film here.

The August seasons in Christchurch and Auckland are of the production which featured in the movie and the Oscar-winning costumes and sets will be on stage.

Mulloy was hired as a consultant on the film and offered to waive his £20,000 ($66,480) fee if his company could have the sets and costumes when shooting finished.

Working on the film, he capitalised on director Mike Leigh's legendary insistence on authenticity of detail. "I would go round and say: 'This is a Mike Leigh film. Those sets have got to be made so they can tour, those costumes have got to be made to last. Mike will want to feel them and run his hand over them.'

"It was a bit naughty, I suppose, but the costumes were £250,000 and the sets were a fortune. So it was better than the £20,000 I was going to get paid to research the film."

Gilbert and Sullivan has been ill-used of late, presented in rollicking, miked-up extravaganzas starring faded pop stars and full of sly innuendo and winking.

Mulloy deplores the trend as much as you would expect but he notes that the D'Oyly Carte company - the legitimate heirs of the G&S tradition - has deserted the original vision.

"They lost their way a bit. It's sad really but they foundered because they brought in guys who had worked in naff musicals and they tried to make it like Dames at Sea.

" They set The Mikado in a sushi bar and gave the men bowler hats and umbrellas and put the girls in short skirts and it lasted a month. The audience turned on its heels and fled."

Those who say G&S is not opera are "absolutely right."

"What it is is pastiche; it's the Spitting Image of its day. It's nicking. Anybody who really knows their Wagner or their Italian opera sits and listens to Gilbert and Sullivan and inwardly smiles because they know what's happening.

"But what's really hard for us to understand is that nothing like that had ever existed before. If you look at all the operettas that had gone before like Maritana and The Bohemian Girl [standard of the original Carl Rosa company] they were forward-thinking.

"The music was revolutionary in that easy-listening groove. Like the Beatles, they were able to get into exactly that wave that appealed to all generations. And they still do."