Princess Ida
Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was their eighth operatic collaboration of fourteen. Princess Ida opened at the Savoy Theatre on 5 January 1884, for a run of 246 performances. The piece concerns a princess who founds a women's university and teaches that women are superior to men and should rule in their stead. The prince to whom she had been married in infancy sneaks into the university, together with two friends, with the aim of collecting his bride. They disguise themselves as women students, but are discovered, and all soon face a literal war between the sexes.
This article is about the Gilbert & Sullivan opera. For the video game character, see Monument Valley (video game).
The opera satirizes feminism, women's education and Darwinian evolution, which were controversial topics in conservative Victorian England. Princess Ida is based on a narrative poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson called The Princess (1847), and Gilbert had written a farcical musical play, based on the poem, in 1870. He lifted much of the dialogue of Princess Ida directly from his 1870 farce. It is the only Gilbert and Sullivan opera in three acts and the only one with dialogue in blank verse.
By Savoy Opera standards, Princess Ida was not considered a success due, in part, to a particularly hot summer in London in 1884, and it was not revived in London until 1919. Nevertheless, the piece is performed regularly today by both professional and amateur companies, although not as frequently as the most popular of the Savoy operas.
1 Starting in the 1920s, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company traditionally deleted this song.
2As musical director, Harry Norris was responsible for adding prominent horn parts to the accompaniment to "A Lady Fair". They were expunged by Malcolm Sargent but subsequently restored by Royston Nash in the 1970s. These are customarily referred to as the "Norris" horn parts, though they may have been written by Geoffrey Toye.
3 The first line of this song is often erroneously sung as "Now wouldn't you like to rule the roost" instead of "roast" (rhymes with "clear the coast" in the next couplet). This typographical error appeared in early vocal scores and still appears in a current Chappell vocal score edition, although some scores have corrected it.
4 In the original production, No. 22 followed No. 23. The present order first appeared in vocal scores published after the first London revival in 1919.
Gilbert claimed that "If you give me your attention" was a satiric self-reference, saying: "I thought it my duty to live up to my reputation".[32] Tom Lehrer performs a parody of the same song called "The Professor's Song".[33] Music from the overture of Ida is heard in Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers.[34]
Princess Ida has received fewer professional recordings than most of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company recorded the piece four times, in 1924, 1932, 1955 and 1965, but the later two recordings have not been as well received as the earlier two. The BBC broadcast the piece in 1966 and 1989, but the recordings are unavailable. Ohio Light Opera recorded the opera in 2000.[53]
The 1982 Brent Walker Productions video is considered to be one of the weakest of the series.[53][54] More recent professional productions have been recorded on video by the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival.[55]