- August 17, 2024 - 7:00 PM
- Gordon Hall, Music Mountain
NEW YORK GILBERT & SULLIVAN PLAYERS
Pirates of Penzance in One Act, plus Audience Requests
Underwritten by an anonymous donor
THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE
or, The Slave of Duty
Sarah Caldwell Smith, Soprano: Mabel
Angela Christine Smith, Contralto: Ruth
Daniel Greenwood, Tenor: Frederic
James Mills, Comic Baritone: Major General Stanley
Matthew Wages, Bass-Baritone: Samuel and Sergeant of Police
David Wannen, Bass-Baritone: The Pirate King
Artistic Director – Albert Bergeret
Piano Accompanist – Elizabeth Rodgers
Following intermission the ensemble will present a variety of selections from the Gilbert & Sullivan repertory in a cabaret format – including time for requests from the audience.
STORY OF THE OPERA
When Frederic was yet a little boy, his nurse (Ruth) was told to apprentice him to become a pilot. She heard the word incorrectly and apprenticed him to a band of pirates, remaining with them herself as a maid-of-all-work. Although Frederic loathed the trade to which he had thus been bound, he dutifully served. As the curtain rises, his indentures are up and he announces his intention to leave the band and devote himself to the extermination of piracy. He urges the pirates to join him in embracing a more lawful calling, but they refuse. Ruth, however, wishes to become his wife. Having seen but few women during his pirate life at sea, Frederic hesitates to accept a woman so much older than himself, but he finally consents to marry her.
Just then a group of girls, all the wards of Major-General Stanley, happen upon the scene. Frederic sees their beauty - and Ruth's plainness - and renounces her. Of these girls, Mabel takes a particular interest in Frederic, and he in her. The other girls are seized by the pirates and threatened with immediate marriage. When the Major-General arrives, he can dissuade the pirates only by a ruse: he tells them that he is an orphan, and so works upon their sympathies that they let him and his wards go free.
During the ensuing days and nights, however, this lie troubles the Major-General's conscience. He sits brooding over it at night in a ruined chapel. He is consoled by his wards' sympathy and Frederic's plan of immediately leading a band of police against the pirates. The police are reluctant, but Frederic is still enthusiastic.
Meanwhile the Pirate King and Ruth seek out Frederic with surprising news. They have discovered that his indentures were to run until his twenty first birthday, and - as he was born on February 29 - he has really had as yet only five birthdays. Obeying the dictates of his strong sense of duty, he immediately rejoins the pirates and tells them of the deception that has been practiced upon them. They swear revenge as Frederic bids Mabel farewell. When Mabel tells the police of this change they comment on their unfortunate lot, then decide to hide. The pirates storm the chapel, seize the Major-General, and easily defeat the unarmed policemen, however, when requested to yield “in Queen Victoria’s name”, they do so at once. Ruth reveals that these apparently lawless pirates are “all noblemen who have gone wrong”. The Major-General pardons all and allows them to marry his wards.