Rupert D'Oyly Carte

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_D%27Oyly_Carte

Rupert D'Oyly Carte (3 November 1876 – 12 September 1948) was an English hotelier, theatre owner and impresario, best known as proprietor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and Savoy Hotel from 1913 to 1948.

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<The Times, September 13, 1948>

<MR. RUPERT D'OYLY CARTE>

The name of Mr. Rupert D'Oyly Carte, who died yesterday, at the Savoy Hotel, was a household word in circles far larger than those of the ordinary musical public because of his association with the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

He inherited the rights in the comic operas which had been brought into existence largely through the initiative of his father, Richard D'Oyly Carte. These rights he rigorously maintained, reserving to his own company the sole right to perform on the professional stage operas which have become a national institution, adhering rigidly to the details of Gilbert's own original productions, and insisting that all amateur companies to whom performing rights were granted should do the same. This loyalty laid him open to the criticism that he had caused the operas to become sterotyped. But he himself never tired of them and maintained a close personal interest in the working details of the company, such as the recruiting of its singers, during all the 35 years he controlled it. He showed a similar thoroughness and attention to detail in the conduct of the hotel owned by the Savoy Hotel Company, of which he became chairman 45 years ago, at the age 27. To his garden in South Devon he brought a similar, persistent and assidious care.

Rupert D'Oyly Carte, who was born in 1876, was educated at Winchester. His marriage to Lady Dorothy Milner Gathorne-Hardy, daughter of the second Earl of Cranbrook, was dissolved in 1941. He is survived by a daughter, his only son having been killed in a motor-car accident in Switzerland in 1932.

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