A Sword Helped Protect Famed Musical Bond : O.C. Music: The Gilbert and Sullivan relationship seemed near an end when fate intervened as a Japanese blade fell.

By one of those ironies that would fit right into their own comic operas, Gilbert and Sullivan wrote what would become their most popular work--”The Mikado”--just when their famous partnership seemed on the verge of breaking up.

After the uncharacteristically modest success of their “Princess Ida,” Sullivan had become ill. Also, prompted in part by well-intentioned friends who urged him to write oratorios and operas, he declared that he didn’t want to write another comic work.

Gilbert, for his part, didn’t have any new ideas and suggested another version of a plot that Sullivan had long rejected--in which one person would become another character by means of a charm or “lozenge.” Sullivan wrote in his letters that he felt the idea was an impossibly “unreal and artificial concept.” The two men exchanged what seemed to be parting shots in letters on May 3 and 4, 1884.

Still, they both faced contractual obligations to produce something for impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte, who had created the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company to stage their works. Then, the story goes, fate intervened. A Japanese sword hanging in Gilbert’s study fell off the wall and conjured up a whole topsy-turvy world in his mind. Within four days, he sketched out a summary of a new “Japanese” opera and sent it to Sullivan, who replied immediately with his “inexpressible relief” at “a plot without the supernatural and improbable.”

The partnership was on course again.

First produced in 1885, “The Mikado, Or the Town of Titipu” ran for nearly two years--672 performances--the longest run of any of the Savoy operas.

Although Gilbert credited inspiration to the sword (which was used as a stage prop in the first production), the crusty librettist, as usual, enjoyed the opportunity to parody yet another extravagant social vogue in Britain, this one for japonaiserie. Japanese fans, wickerwork and knickknacks could be seen in every fashionable drawing room.

Gilbert took advantage of the Japanese Exhibition in London in 1884, where he found a geisha girl (“her English was limited to ‘sixpence, please,’ ” he remarked) to take along to the Savoy rehearsals to teach the cast Japanese “deportment.” She taught the women how to dress, make up and move with the quick, shuffling steps appropriate to ladies in kimonos. She instructed both the men and women in manipulating the large, ornate fans that became a feature of the opera, adding flair to every mood and gesture.

In summary, the plot of “The Mikado” may sound more grim and bloodthirsty than it actually is.

Nanki-Poo, the son of the Mikado, or Emperor of Japan, has disguised himself as a wandering minstrel to escape the attentions of Katisha, an elderly lady determined to marry him. He is in love with Yum-Yum, a beautiful schoolgirl, but she is engaged to her ward, Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner of the town of Titipu.

Because there has not been a recent execution in Titipu, the Mikado threatens to demote the city to the status of a village unless an execution is carried out forthwith. The love-thwarted Nanki-Poo volunteers to be the victim--provided he can marry Yum-Yum first and spend a month with her. Ko-Ko agrees. But before the plan can be carried out, the Mikado arrives, with Katisha. . . . Naturally, all the muddles and puzzles are worked out and the two young lovers are united. At the end, in fact, everyone is more or less happy with his or her lot.

Gilbert rewrote the plot 11 times. Sullivan began composing the music shortly before Christmas, 1884. The first thing he wrote--in one day--was “Three Little Maids From School.” He composed “The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring” one evening between tea and dinner. His diary also recounts: “March 3rd: Worked all night at Finale, 1st Act. Finished at 5 a.m. 63 pages of score at one sitting.”

The popularity of the piece led other people to attempt their own productions. To forestall one such production in New York, Carte secretly sent a small cast to open “The Mikado” at the Fifth Avenue Theater on Broadway a week before his American competition mounted a production in August, 1885.

The case went to court, where a Tammany Hall judge decided against the D’Oyly Carte. Judge Justice Divver of New York City ruled: “Copyright or no copyright, commercial honesty or commercial buccaneering, no Englishman possesses any rights which a true-born American is bound to respect.”

Sullivan, who was in the United States at the time, replied to the judge with an impassioned speech from his box at the end of a gala performance. The speech later was published throughout the United States and is credited for bringing about revision of the copyright laws of America.

The American run, incidentally, lasted 430 performances.

So how Japanese is it?

“The March of the Mikado’s Troops” is the only truly Japanese music in the whole piece. It is the march to which the imperial army reputedly marched to battle in 1868.

But otherwise, not much at all.

As the English author G. K. Chesterton wrote: “Gilbert pursued and persecuted the evils of modern England till they had literally not a leg to stand on, exactly as Swift did under the allegory of ‘Gulliver’s Travels.’ I doubt if there is a single joke in the whole play that fits the Japanese. But all the jokes in the play fit the English.”

Still, the Japanese were worried enough to protest, albeit briefly, during the opera’s first run. And 20 years later, in 1907, the Lord Chamberlain withdrew “The Mikado’s” license during a state visit by a Japanese prince. For six weeks, the play was officially banned. Even concert performances of the music were banned. Helen D’Oyly Carte, wife of impresario Richard, went ahead with her touring performances all the same.

Later productions were decidedly unauthorized. A Berlin version in the decadent ‘20s featured Katisha arriving in an automobile, the schoolgirls in short skirts, a Charleston in the first-act finale and Yum-Yum bathing nude at the beginning of the second. There have been two “swing” versions, both on Broadway in 1939 (one starred legendary tapper Bill (Bojangles) Robinson). In a ‘60s television abridgement, Groucho Marx played Ko-Ko. In the ‘70s in London, a “Black Mikado” introduced West Indian touches.

Would Gilbert have approved?

We know that the librettist was renowned for his strictness with the cast and his close attention to detail. He once reprimanded George Grossmith, who was playing Ko-Ko, for adding some “comic” stage business--rolling over completely on the floor when kneeling before the Mikado. Gilbert asked Grossmith to omit the roll in the future.

“Certainly, if you wish, but I got a big laugh by it,” Grossmith said.

“So you would if you sat on a pork pie,” Gilbert answered.

The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company of Great Britain will present “The Mikado” tonight through Thursday at 8 p.m. and “The Pirates of Penzance” Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $12 to $38. Information: (714) 556-2787.