The Merry Wives of Windsor – Incidental Music

Composer: SULLIVAN, Sir Arthur
  • Sullivan wrote the incidental music for a production of Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor that premiered in London in 1874.
  • The music written for mezzo-soprano, chorus, and orchestra is used for the Act V forest scene and consists of the following sections:
    1. Prelude (Moonlight)
    2. Tripping entrance of fairies with Anne Page
    3. Song for Anne Page
    4. Scene for Anne and the children, solo and chorus
    5. Dance round the tree
    6. Dance and Chorus “Fie on sinful fantasie”
  • Sullivan chose not to include an overture for the production because he “didn’t care about competing with the very pretty one of Nicolai.” The composer is referring to Otto Nicolai’s opera, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (“Merry Wives of Windsor”), which premiered in 1849.1

Sources

  1. Paul Howarth, “Sullivan’s Incidental Music to Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor,” Gilbert and Sullivan Archive (2011), accessed August 23, 2022, https://gsarchive.net/sullivan/windsor/index.html.

Cut IDs

13477