Production Note

Notes on the Production

WRITTEN BY Julia Brown Simmons

PHOTOS BY Jeff Roffman

Production photos of The Pirates of Penzance from The Atlanta Opera’s 2016 production at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. Charles Dickens wrote in his novel Bleak House, “You have served your country and you know that when duty calls we must obey.” Dickens’s exploration—and frequent criticism—of “duty” in his 1852 novel responds to the sense of duty to queen and country that pervaded Victorian England. Dickens was not alone in his inclination to respond to this feature of Victorian life—Gilbert and Sullivan, too, picked it up in their Pirates of Penzance, an 1879 satiric operetta for which the alternative title is The Slave of Duty.

W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan were a librettistcomposer duo who worked together on Englishlanguage comic operas from 1871-1896. These fourteen operas, known as the Savoy Operas after the theater built to stage them, show the height of each artist’s talents. Gilbert created absurd, fanciful worlds, filling his libretti with paradoxes and polysyllabic rhymes. Sullivan’s orchestration, parodying composers like Verdi, Donizetti, Schubert, and Gounod, both matched the lightness and drew out the ironies in Gilbert’s libretti. The duo saw great success together, but tensions between them rose as their interests conflicted—in particular, Sullivan sought to pursue more serious operatic subjects, while Gilbert did not. They eventually separated over a disagreement concerning the Savoy’s finances. Gilbert and Sullivan’s best-known works include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Mikado, and, of course, The Pirates of Penzance. The Pirates of Penzance arose from a piracy issue—just not the seagoing variety. Pirated versions of H.M.S. Pinafore were being performed in America in 1878-79, and Gilbert and Sullivan ultimately traveled to America to deal with that issue. They brought with them their new Pirates of Penzance, which premiered in New York City in December 1879, shortly before its premiere in London a few months later.

At the core of The Pirates of Penzance is a satire of Victorian duty: in addition to absurd paradoxes and bizarre mistakes, an overly inflated sense of duty drives the plot of the opera. Frederic fulfills his training as a pirate (instead of a “pilot”) feeling duty-bound because of his promise of apprenticeship, which was to last through his 21st birthday. After realizing he was born on a leap day—and reaching the fallacious conclusion that he would not pass his 21st birthday for another 67 years—Frederic decides to surrender to his fate and swear loyalty to the pirates for the remainder of his days out of this same sense of duty. The pirates, after capturing the Major-General’s daughters, yield to the Major-General in Queen Victoria’s name. The characters in the opera become caricatures of figures in Victorian era British society. At a time of imperial expansion, particularly in Asia and Africa, and the height of the British Empire, this representation of blind Victorian pride and duty can be a biting critique of the pervasive imperialist mindset.