American Savoyards

Former light opera company in New York City

American Savoyards was an Off Broadway and touring repertory theatre company that produced light operas, principally the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, in New York City and on tour between 1948 and 1967.

In 1948, director Dorothy Raedler started a professional Gilbert and Sullivan repertory company, The Masque and Lyre Light Opera Company, named after an amateur theatre group that she had founded in 1939 in college and directed under that name.

Raedler planned to take the company on tour in 1952. She traveled to England in June 1952 with her leading comic baritone and leading soprano, Rue and Sally Knapp, to research W. S. Gilbert's staging, choreography, costumes, properties and other aspects of the original Gilbert and Sullivan productions. They returned each summer for seven years to Monmouth, generally for ten week seasons. Their format was eight performances of a different G&S show each week (6 evenings, 2 matinees, no Sunday performances). In 1956, Ronald Bush, the company's principal bass baritone, gave up his on stage roles to become its music director.

The company continued performing in New York (including at the Jan Hus, Shakespearewrights Theatre, Greenwich Mews, Actor's Playhouse, Brooklyn Academy of Music and other venues) and toured elsewhere in the United States.

The company's accompaniment consisted of a piano and Hammond organ, although occasionally it performed with the full Sullivan orchestra on tour. Musical director Ronald Bush generally conducted from the organ. All of the productions were directed and choreographed by Raedler. The principal actors were mostly members of Actors' Equity Association, and the company often used young local talent in the chorus. The company performed long seasons. and Robert Schmorr (opera singers who later appeared at the Metropolitan Opera), Arthur Mathews (who later appeared on Broadway), opera singer and director Don Yule, James Stuart (who founded the Ohio Light Opera), Allan Lokos (Broadway actor and now a minister).

Dorothy Raedler was born February 24, 1917, in New York City. She attended Hunter College. In addition to her Gilbert and Sullivan companies, she directed non G&S operas in various venues, including several at New York City Opera, Baltimore Civic Opera Company and elsewhere from the 1960s. The New York Times wrote: "Plácido Domingo, a new tenor, was Pinkerton. Dorothy Raedler's direction and Franco Patane's authoritative conducting were major factors in a presentation that offered nothing but pleasure." Raedler also directed Gilbert and Sullivan productions for City Opera and for the City Center Gilbert & Sullivan Company, Ruth Kobart, and Raymond Allen. Raedler retired to St. Croix VI in the Virgin Islands in 1968, where she helped to found the St. Croix School of the Arts, a program for children. She died of cancer on December 11, 1993.