The Time Traveller Bryan and I wrote The Time Traveller in 2011 as a tribute to those great masters of comic opera, Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan. There are many references in the piece that G&S aficionados instantly recognise as relating directly to a G&S opera. The piece was warmly received at its world premiere at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in 2012. More details and full video here.
RECITATIVE — EBENEZER Ebenezer is trying to decide whether to accept an offer of help from Lucy. This recitative is a parody of a recitative in Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore.
On the one hand, I am in need of a friend and having always found relationships difficult, despite reading all the self-help books on how to appear attractive to women, and how to get that first date and how to make small-talk, And despite having all the money that I need, I have always failed in that department, and am really lonely.
And on the other, she might have heard about my wealth and has decided to trick me into a loveless marriage during which she will live well at my expense and through some form of mental torture drive me to drink and an early grave, and spend the rest of her life living in luxury,
TRIO — THE PROFESSOR, LUCY and EBENEZER After testing saliva samples from Ebenezer and Lucy, The Professor decides that they are related. In the ensuing trio, The Professor sings the following:
If you wonder why it is that you're bad-tempered or quite placid, It's all written in your deoxyribonucleic acid. You can find it in the nucleus of every body cell, It makes up genes and chromosomes in every boy and gel [sic], If you doubt that I am right, or don't believe in what I say, You will find it is confirmed if you should test your D N A.
And later in the trio there is a parody of ‘Hail Poetry’ from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance:
Hail D N A that makes us tick, Discovered by Watson and Crick. Storeroom of our genetic ode, Glorified in this short ode.