For the intervals of the series of Savoy Operas broadcast in 1989, the BBC commissioned David Mackie to give interval talks about each opera.

The most interesting of these were those where the versions we know today are different from those originally performed. This enabled Mackie to have recordings made of some of the "lost" music.

In the case of 'Iolanthe' we have Stephon's recitative and song sung here by Neil Jenkins.

"My bill has now been read a second time:
His ready vote no member now refuses;
In verity I wield a pow'r sublime,
And one that I can turn to mighty uses!
What joy to carry, in the very teeth
Of ministry, cross-bench and opposition,
Some rather urgent measures quite beneath
The ken of Patriot and Politician!

Fold your flapping wings,
Soaring legislature!
Stoop to little things,
Stoop to human nature!
Never need to roam,
Members patriotic,
Let’s begin at home
Crime is no exotic!
Bitter is your bane
Terrible your trials,
Dingy Drury Lane!
Soapless Seven Dials!

Take a tipsy lout,
Gathered from the gutter.
Hustle him about,
Strap him to a shutter.
What am I but he,
Washed at hours stated,
Fed on filagree,
Clothed and educated?
He’s a mark of scorn,
I might be another,
If I had been born
Of a tipsy mother.

Take a wretched thief,
Through the city sneaking.
Pocket handkerchief
Ever, ever seeking.
What is he but I
Robbed of all my chances,
Picking pockets by
Force of circumstances?
I might be as bad,
As unlucky, rather,
If I’d only had
Fagin for a father!"


David Mackie was born in Greenock in 1943 and studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and the Universities of Glasgow and Birmingham, before joining the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company as repetiteur in 1975.

He was promoted to chorus master and associate musical director in 1976, serving until the closure of the Company in 1982. He has the distinction of conducting the last full performance of a Gilbert & Sullivan opera with the original D'Oyly Carte Opera Company:a matinee performance of H.M.S. Pinafore on February 27, 1982.

Since 1982 he has worked as a freelance accompanist, repetiteur, and conductor. In collaboration with Sir Charles Mackerras he reconstructed Arthur Sullivan's "lost" cello concerto.

He has worked with the London Opera Players, the London Savoyards, and New Sadler's Wells Opera, and has been musical director for many concerts, operas, operettas, and pantomimes. In November 2000 he conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and a chorus of 500 in a Royal Albert Hall concert commemorating the centenary of Arthur Sullivan's death.

In 2005, Mackie researched and edited "Arthur Sullivan and The Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain," a volume produced for, and published by, the Royal Society and drawn from the proceedings of the Society's 145th Anniversary Festival Dinner (in 1883) and other papers relating to Sullivan in that organization's archives. More recently, he has chronicled his experiences in the last years of the D'Oyly Carte (1875-82) in a memoir entitled "Nothing Like Work, or Right in the D'Oyly Carte" (Grosvenor House, 2018).

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