The Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company’s Production of
The Pirates of Penzance, or the Slave of Duty
November 4 to 20, 2022
The Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company is pleased to announce that it will present The Pirates of Penzance, for three weekends, from November 4 to 20, 2022.
This production will be directed by Gary Briggle, with choreography by Penelope Freeh and Music Direction by Dr. Randal Buikema.
This production will be dedicated to the memory of company founder, Stage Director, Music Director, Set Designer and leading man Dick Fishel.
The cast for this production of The Pirates of Penzance includes:
One of Gilbert and Sullivan’s most popular operettas, The Pirates of Penzance tells the story of Frederic, who was apprenticed, as a child, to a band of tenderhearted, orphaned pirates by his nurse who, being hard of hearing, had mistaken her master’s instructions to apprentice the boy to a pilot. Frederic, upon completing his 21st year, rejoices that he has fulfilled his indentures and is now free to return to respectable society. It turns out, however, that he was born on February 29th in leap year, and he remains apprenticed to the pirates until his 21st birthday. By the end of the opera, the pirates, a Major General who knows nothing of military strategy, his large family of beautiful but unwed daughters, and the timid constabulary all contribute to a cacophony that can be silenced only by Queen Victoria’s name.
The Pirates of Penzance, or The Slave of Duty, was Gilbert and Sullivan’s fifth collaboration, following their extraordinarily successful production of H.M.S. Pinafore. The Pirates of Penzance opened simultaneously in England and America. The opera premiered on December 31, 1879 at the Fifth Avenue Theater in New York with Sullivan conducting, but a single performance had been given on the previous day at the Royal Bijou Theatre, Paignton, England, to secure the British copyright. Finally, the opera opened on April 3, 1880, at the Opéra Comique in London, where it ran for 363 performances, having already been playing successfully for over three months in New York.