Sullivan and the Historiography of the American Musical.”

The scholars David Walsh and Len Platt consciously dis-connect musical theatre from operetta in their historical analysis, Musical Theater and American Culture, because linking them “makes it impossible to understand... the musical as an artistic phenomenon of popular culture that is reflexively tied... to American society and its culture ” (Walsh and Platt 6). If they are including Gilbert and Sullivan among their French, Turk, Prussian, or perhaps Italian colleagues who worked in the nineteenth-century operetta genre, then they want to exclude the two Englishmen from the history of the musical theatre genre. Walsh and Platt’s line of reasoning categorizes Gilbert and Sullivan and the operetta genre as highbrow Euro-culture that egregiously polluted the late nineteenth-century American scene. Richard Traubner argues, conversely, that operetta represents the heart and soul of the American musical theatre (Traubner 378). In any event, Walsh and Platt’s view opens the door to the reasons why scholars generally give short shrift to Gilbert, Sullivan, and D’Oyly Carte when narrating the historical development of the American musical theatre, and it’s worth investigating this phenomenon and its causes. By glossing over the Savoy triumvirate, scholars have overlooked their historical significance for American musical theatre. Gilbert and Sul-livan developed a formula for producing successful musical theatre that American showmakers ultimately embraced during Broadway’s golden era in the mid-twentieth century. That formula included th