The Beauty Stone is an opera, billed as a "romantic musical drama" in three acts, composed by Arthur Sullivan to a libretto by Arthur Wing Pinero and J. Comyns Carr. The medieval Faustian story concerns an ugly, crippled girl, who dreams of being beautiful and meeting a handsome prince. The Devil offers her a magical stone that confers perfect beauty to anyone who wears it. The stone is passed from one character to another, but eventually the prince recognizes the girl's beautiful soul, the stone is discarded, and the disappointed Devil leaves the town.
It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 28 May 1898, closing on 16 July 1898 after a run of just 50 performances, making it the least successful of Sullivan's operas. Reviewers criticised the lyrics and lengthy dialogue scenes and the lack of humour in the story. Savoy audiences, accustomed to more comic and satiric pieces, did not find the opera attractive. The cast of The Beauty Stone included Savoy regulars Walter Passmore, Rosina Brandram, Ruth Vincent, Emmie Owen and Henry Lytton, as well as opera singer Pauline Joran.
The opera was revived by the Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1901–02 on tour in a cut version.
Background
When the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership collapsed after the production of The Gondoliers in 1889, their producer Richard D'Oyly Carte struggled to find successful new works to show at the Savoy Theatre. Carte produced Sullivan's grand opera, Ivanhoe at another theatre, and afterwards, he turned to Sullivan to create more comic operas for the Savoy. With Sydney Grundy, Sullivan wrote the nostalgic and sentimental Haddon Hall (1892) then, reunited with W. S. Gilbert, he produced Utopia, Limited (1893). He next returned, with his earlier collaborator F. C. Burnand, with The Chieftain (1894) and collaborated for the last time with Gilbert on The Grand Duke (1896). None of these had proved to be more than modestly successful, and Carte's other new pieces for the Savoy in the 1890s had done no better. Following the success of Sullivan's ballet Victoria and Merrie England in 1897, Carte asked Sullivan to work on another new opera for the Savoy.
Carte assembled a high quality team for The Beauty Stone, hoping for a hit. J. Comyns Carr had earlier written the text for Henry Irving's grand production of the King Arthur legend, for which Sullivan had provided the incidental music score in 1895. Sullivan had in the past considered the idea of an opera on the same subject and was pleased when Carr offered him a similarly romantic work with a medieval setting. The eponymous beauty stone was a magical item that would transform its holder's appearance but would have unanticipated consequences. Sullivan seemed not to notice that this major element of the plot was simply a variant of the "magic lozenge" plot that Gilbert had so often proposed to the composer, and that he had repeatedly rejected. A. W. Pinero was at the height of his career in 1898, having produced several enduring successes in the 1890s, including The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893) and The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith (1895), and the same year as The Beauty Stone he would produce Trelawny of the 'Wells' (1898). One of the most important, prolific and popular British playwrights, Pinero was later knighted for his services to dramatic authorship. Carr conceived of the basic idea of the libretto, that true beauty is an inner quality. Carr confined himself to writing the lyrics, however, and Pinero was brought in to work out the plot and write the dialogue. Having brought together three such eminent talents, Carte had high expectations, and there was much anticipation in the press.