Richard D'Oyly Carte - Career

Career

Between 1868 and 1877, Carte wrote and published the music for a number of his own songs and instrumental works, as well as several comic operas: Doctor Ambrosias – His Secret, at St. George's Hall (1868); Marie, with librettist E. Spencer Mott, at London's Opera Comique in 1871; and Happy Hampstead, with librettist Frank Desprez, which debuted on an 1876 provincial tour and then played at the Royalty Theatre in 1877. On tour in 1871, Carte conducted Cox and Box by composer Arthur Sullivan and dramatist F. C. Burnand, in tandem with English adaptations of two Offenbach pieces, called Rose of Auvergne and Breaking the Spell, in which Carte's client Selina Dolaro appeared. Carte's musical talent would be helpful later in his career, as he was able to audition singers himself from the pianoforte.

During the late 1860s and early 1870s, from within his father's firm in Charing Cross and, by late 1874, from a nearby address in Craig's Court, Carte began to build an operatic, concert and lecture management agency. His two hundred clients eventually included Charles Gounod, Jacques Offenbach, Adelina Patti, Mario, Clara Schumann, Antoinette Sterling, Edward Lloyd, Mr. and Mrs. German Reed, George Grossmith, Matthew Arnold, James McNeill Whistler and Oscar Wilde. Hesketh Pearson said of Carte: "His acute business sense was aided by a frank and agreeable manner.... He took what other people thought were risks, but he felt were certainties. He knew everyone worth knowing... and his practical judgement was as sure as his sense of artistry."