Sullivan and Rowe - The Zoo

The BBC's recording of Sullivan and Rowe's 'The Zoo', first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at 3.55pm on New Year's Eve 1972. The first professional performance since 1879.
This recording made off-air from BBC Radio 3 on 28th December 1988.
Aesculapius Carboy ... John Boulter
Elizabeth Smith ... Joy Roberts
Thomas Brown (the Duke of Islington) ... Leslie Fyson
Laetitia Grinder ... Lissa Gary
Mr. Grinder ... Ian Wallace
Narrator ... Cormac Rigby
BBC Concert Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Ashley Lawrence
Produced by David Rayvern Allen
'The Zoo' is a one-act comic opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by B. C. Stephenson, writing under the pen name of Bolton Rowe.
Benjamin Charles Stephenson (1839 - 22 January 1906) was an English dramatist, lyricist and librettist. After beginning a career in the civil service, he started to write for the theatre, using the pen name "Bolton Rowe". He was author or co-author of several long-running shows of the Victorian theatre. His biggest hit was the comic opera 'Dorothy', which set records for the length of its original run.
His writing collaborators included Clement Scott and Brandon Thomas, and composers with whom he worked included Frederic Clay, Alfred Cellier and Arthur Sullivan.
'The Zoo' had its first public performance on 5th June 1875 at the St. James's Theatre in London (as an afterpiece to W. S. Gilbert's 'Tom Cobb'), concluding its run five weeks later, on 10 July 1875, at the Haymarket Theatre. There were brief revivals in late 1875, and again in 1879. The score was not published and was inherited by Sullivan's nephew Herbert after the composer's death. It stayed in the Sullivan family until Herbert's widow's death in 1957.
Terence Rees purchased the composer's autograph at auction in 1966 and arranged for publication with a vocal score by Garth Morton. Its first amateur performance was by the Fulham Light Opera in 1971.
The story concerns two pairs of lovers. First, a nobleman, who goes to the zoo to woo the girl who sells snacks there. He tries to impress her by buying and eating all of the food. The other couple is a young chemist who believes that he has poisoned his beloved by mixing up her father's prescription with peppermint that he had meant for her.
The opera is in one act without spoken dialogue.