When ‘Law’ Rhymes with ‘Flaw’: the Sounds of British Justice in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury (1875)

Gilbert and Sullivan’s second operatic collaboration, Trial by Jury (1875) is often discarded as a ‘minor’ work, compared to their later, better-known operas such as The Pirates of Penzance (1879), The Mikado (1885) or The Gondoliers (1889). Yet I would argue that as early as the mid-1870s, the composer-and-librettist duo had successfully started working on what might be perceived by their audience as the ‘sound’ best fit to satirize a number of Victorian institutions—here, the judicial system, turned topsy-turvy by a banal breach of promise case. Their already clever play on tessitura, the many echoes of grand Italian opera tunes and their attempt at rendering the comical and ludicrous atmosphere of the courtroom all coalesced to make Trial by Jury a key example of how both their witty words and catchy notes were—back then and are still now—heard as truly British. ; Parce que Trial by Jury a, dès sa composition, posé des difficultés d’ordre générique (comment nommer cet ouvrage ?), le sens de cet « opéra de poche » se trouve sans doute au-delà de la seule satire judiciaire qu’il semble proposer. C’est plutôt du côté du « son » de la justice que du sens du langage articulé que se trouve la vraie originalité de cet ouvrage. Cette étude se propose donc d’aborder les expérimentations à la fois vocales et instrumentales de Gilbert et Sullivan et de montrer comment ils se sont joués des frontières entre, d’une part, le domaine du langage articulé et de la musique harmonieuse et, d’autre part, celui des sons, voire des bruits.