About Princess Ida and Gilbert and Sullivan

Princess Ida was WS Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan's eighth joint venture - following two years after Iolanthe and one year before The Mikado.

The opening took place on Twelfth Night in January 1884 - a festival for which it was remarkably well suited, with its wit, farce, zany slapstick, gags and dame-like transvesticism (such as we now see every New Year in pantomime - a genre with which Ida has much in common).

The often rather crude humour of Ida characters shocked the usual opera going elite, but appealed instead to the music hall regulars, helping to win over a new audience in time for Mikado with its equally shocking humour.

Gilbert and Sullivan's working partnership could hardly have been more successful, but it had its difficulties. The two did not get on at all well. Sullivan was a typical Victorian pompous "everything in its rightful place" member of society, whereas Gilbert was more mischievous - not caring too much about the opinions of society, including those of Her Majesty! It has always been a mystery how, despite such differences, it seemed second nature to Sullivan to set Gilbert's lyrics so perfectly, bringing out their full humour.

It was Richard D'Oyle Carte who managed to keep the partnership afloat. He was responsible for staging all G&S operettas. For a century the D'Oyle Carte family held full rights for these operas with the "D'Oyle Carte Company" performing non-stop G&S around the world.

With its most recent recording of Princess Ida, the D'Oyle Carte Company reckoned its music to be some ot the best Sullivan had written. The music certainly has brilliant ensembles, duets, trios, quartet, quintet and chorus work that is unforgettable and a constant flow of one joyful melody after another, with no "fill in" music and very little recitative (sung speech).

Each G&S opera satirises one element of British society. The targets of Princess Ida are the changing role of women and Darwin's theory of evolution.

The story is taken from Tennyson's epic poem The Princess and the whole libretto is written in iambic pentameter (such as Shakespeare used) to parody this. But this parody is totally irreverent, and, for educated Victorians who knew Tennyson, it would have had much the same scandalous effect as a direct comparison between Monty Python's Holy Grail and Tennyson's other epic Le Morte D'Arthur.

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