Gallantry is a one act opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 by composer Douglas Moore. The work is a parody of soap opera

Soap opera

A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

, complete with sung commercial interruptions. The work uses an English language libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Arnold Sundgaard. The opera premiered in a double bill with Dominick Argento

Dominick Argento

Dominick Argento is an American composer, best known as a leading composer of lyric opera and choral music...

's The Boor on March 19, 1958 in New York City at the now-destroyed Brander Matthews Theater on 117th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive. It was presented by the Columbia University School of Music with a student cast. It has subsequently been staged by several other university opera theatre programs in the United States and Canada, including UCLA (1958, 1974, and 1994), Immaculate Heart College

Immaculate Heart College

Immaculate Heart College was a private, Catholic college located in Los Angeles, California.The college was established in 1916 by the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary ten years after they had founded Immaculate Heart High School on the property....

 (1968), Goucher College

Goucher College

Goucher College is a private, co-educational, liberal arts college located in the northern Baltimore suburb of Towson in unincorporated Baltimore County, Maryland, on a 287 acre campus. The school has approximately 1,475 undergraduate students studying in 31 majors and six interdisciplinary...

 (1969) , the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

 (1978), the University of Toronto

University of Toronto

The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

 (1988), San Diego State University

San Diego State University

San Diego State University , founded in 1897 as San Diego Normal School, is the largest and oldest higher education facility in the greater San Diego area , and is part of the California State University system...

 (1989), Pepperdine University

Pepperdine University

Pepperdine University is an independent, private, medium-sized university affiliated with the Churches of Christ. The university's campus overlooking the Pacific Ocean in unincorporated Los Angeles County, California, United States, near Malibu, is the location for Seaver College, the School of...

 (1990), Wilfrid Laurier University

Wilfrid Laurier University

Wilfrid Laurier University is a university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It also has campuses in Brantford, Ontario, Kitchener, Ontario and Toronto, Ontario and a future proposed campus in Milton, Ontario. It is named in honour of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the seventh Prime Minister of Canada....

 (1992), the University of Arizona

University of Arizona

The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...

 (1995), George Washington University

George Washington University

The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...

 (1999), and the University of Wisconsin (2003) among others. The University of Southern California

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

 toured the opera to Holland in 1968.

The first professional opera company to stage Gallantry was the Detroit Opera, which presented the work in a double bill with Gian Carlo Menotti

Gian Carlo Menotti

Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...

's The Medium

The Medium

The Medium is a short two-act dramatic opera with words and music by Gian Carlo Menotti. Commissioned by Columbia University, its first performance was there on 8 May 1946. The opera's first professional production was presented on a double bill with Menotti's The Telephone at the Heckscher...

in January 1962. Gallantry was adapted by Moore for television and was broadcast by CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 on August 30, 1962 in a program which also included a presentation of Wallingford Riegger

Wallingford Riegger

Wallingford Constantine Riegger was a prolific American music composer, well known for orchestral and modern dance music, and film scores...

's ballet Parallels. The production was produced by Pamela Illott, directed by Martin Carr, hosted by Jan Peerce

Jan Peerce

Jan Peerce was an American operatic tenor. Peerce was an accomplished performer on the operatic and Broadway concert stages, in solo recitals, and as a recording artist. He is the father of film director Larry Peerce....

, and featured the CBS Symphony Orchestra. It starred Laurel Hurley as the Nurse, Ron Holgate

Ron Holgate

Ronald "Ron" Holgate is a American actor and opera singer. He is known for winning the Tony Award for Best Supporting Actor as Richard Henry Lee in the original Broadway production of 1776.-Early life:...

 as the Surgeon, Charles Anthony as the Patient, and Martha Wright

Martha Wright (actress)

Martha Wright is a retired American actress best known for her performances on Broadway and on television.Beginning to sing in radio, musical theatre and opera in her native Seattle as a teenager, Wright moved to New York City and debuted on Broadway by age 21, where she soon had a major success...

 as the Announcer. The opera was staged at the 1967 Florida International Music Festival in Daytona Beach with Metropolitan Opera

Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...

 performers Carol Courtman, Julian Patrick

Julian Patrick

Julian Patrick was an American operatic baritone and voice teacher. Born in Mississippi, Patrick grew up in Birmingham, Alabama where he was a member of the Apollo Boys Choir...

, and Enrico Di Giuseppe

Enrico Di Giuseppe

Enrico Di Giuseppe was a celebrated Italian-American operatic tenor who had an active performance career from the late 1950s through the 1990s. He spent most of his career performing in New York City, juggling concurrent performance contracts with both the New York City Opera and the Metropolitan...

. The opera was subsequently staged by the Canadian Opera Company

Canadian Opera Company

The Canadian Opera Company is an opera company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest opera company in Canada and the third largest producer of opera in North America. The COC performs in its own opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.-History:For 40 years until...

 (1977) and the Lake George Opera (1986). More recently the opera has been of interest to chamber opera

Chamber opera

Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra.The term and form were invented by Benjamin Britten in the 1940s, when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small...

 ensembles, with productions being staged by the American Chamber Opera Company (1988), A Small Company In America (1990), the New York Chamber Ensemble (1991), and Pocket Opera

Pocket Opera

Pocket Opera is an opera company based in San Francisco, California which has been presenting operas in English since 1978. The company was founded by Donald Pippin, whose musical career has spanned over six decades...

 (2000).

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, March 19, 1958 (Conductor: – Emerson Buckley Emerson Buckley Emerson Buckley An American Orchestral conductor born in New York City. Buckley graduated from Columbia University in 1934 and made his conducting debut that same year at age 20... )
Announcer	mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...	Cecilia Ward
Lola Markham, a nurse	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Bonnie Murray
Donald Hopewell, a patient	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Joseph Sopher
Doctor Gregg	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	David Atkinson David Atkinson (baritone) David Atkinson is a retired Canadian baritone and actor. Most of his career was spent performing in musicals and operettas in New York City from the late 1940s through the early 1970s, although he did appear in some operas and made a few television appearances. In 1952 he created the role of Sam...

Discography

• New York Chamber Ensemble/Radcliffe Happy Endings: Comic Chamber Operas CD / Albany 173 (1995)