The Gentleman in Black

The Gentleman in Black is a two-act comic opera written in 1870 with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Frederic Clay. The "musical comedietta" opened at the Charing Cross Theatre on 26 May 1870. It played for 26 performances, until the theatre closed at the end of the season. The plot involves body-switching, facilitated by the magical title character. It also involves two devices that Gilbert would re-use: baby-switching and a calendar oddity.

Produced soon after Gilbert first met Arthur Sullivan, but before the two had collaborated, Gilbert's first full-length comic opera, The Gentleman in Black, was based on the theatrically popular theory of metempsychosis. Gilbert and Frederic Clay had collaborated previously on a one-act opera, Ages Ago. The music was not published and is now lost. The piece was never revived, although modern performances have been given, fitting music by Sullivan to the Gilbert lyrics.

The libretto is included in Original Plays by W. S. Gilbert in Four Series, in the fourth volume in the series (1911) published by Chatto and Windus of London.

From the mid-1860s through the early 1870s, W. S. Gilbert was extremely productive, writing a large quantity of comic verse, theatre reviews and other journalistic pieces, short stories, and dozens of plays and comic operas. His output in 1870 alone included dozens of his popular comic Bab Ballads; two blank verse comedies, The Princess and The Palace of Truth; two comic operas, Our Island Home and The Gentleman in Black; and various other short stories, comic pieces, and reviews appearing in various periodicals and newspapers. In 1871 he was even busier, producing seven plays and operas.

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