SCOTTISH Opera has, since 2013, enjoyed a rich and productive relationship with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, which is dedicated to producing the works of WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan (G&S). These stagings of The Gondoliers and Utopia, Limited (the 12th and 13th of the duo’s 14 collaborative works) follow successful co-productions of The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado.
The much-loved comic opera The Gondoliers, in which two handsome Venetian brothers, gondola sailors Marco and Giuseppe Palmieri, are whisked away to the fictional island nation of Barataria (in the belief that one of them is, in fact, the rightful king of that country) is typical of the famously “topsy turvy” world of librettist Gilbert. This production, which is directed by G&S expert Stuart Maunder (courtesy of the State Opera of South Australia, where he is artistic director), is a magnificently exuberant pleasure.
Act 1, which is set in Venice, is all Victorian picture postcard archetypes. Gondoliers ply their happy trade, singing while they work.
Meanwhile, bold peasant girls sing of their universal admiration for the Palmieri brothers, bewailing the fact that there are 14 of them, while Marco and Giuseppe “are only two”. When the brothers arrive, they do so with hilarious, thigh-slapping self-confidence.
Unbeknownst to the gallant gondoliers, their fate lies in the hands of the Grand Inquisitor and his guests, the Duke and Duchess of Plaza-Toro, and their daughter, Casilda. One of the Palmieri brothers, it seems, was the infant prince of Barataria, smuggled to Venice by the Inquisitor to save him from the Methodism of his father, the King.
However, Casilda had, it transpires, been married to the baby prince while she herself was but six months old. So, until the identity of the regal Palmieri brother can be wrung, by inquisitorial means, from his erstwhile nanny, both gondoliers (who have just married new brides of their own) must be taken to Barataria to share the throne.
This inspired silliness bowls along splendidly thanks to the witty rhymes of Gilbert’s cleverly satirical libretto and Sullivan’s enchantingly light and entertaining music. Maunder’s production has the measure, both of the opera’s pace and its fabulous chutzpah.
A SONG of topical observation is updated to include humorous references to Dominic Cummings and Jacob “Rees-Moggy”, among others. The Duchess’s dress, which is so wide that it has to be moved around on wheels, is gloriously absurd.
It seems invidious to single out any performer, so excellent is the entire company. However, Ben McAteer’s Grand Inquisitor, a delicious picture of pomposity, gives an outstanding comic performance.
The Scottish Opera orchestra, under the baton of Derek Clark, delivers Sullivan’s exhilarating score with colourful, expressive gusto. It is, all-in-all, a marvellously no-holds-barred staging of an absolutely joyous comic opera.
There is, in The Gondoliers, a few jokes at the expense of, Gilbert’s bugbear, the Joint Stock Companies Act of 1862 (whereby a large company, such as a major football club, to take an entirely random example, could declare itself bust, leaving creditors out of pocket, at very little personal expense to the major shareholders). There’s very much more on the subject in G&S’s lesser-known opera Utopia, Limited.
Given a smart and engaging treatment here as a semi-staged concert (which plays at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh on November 5), the piece is an enjoyable comedy in which the Anglophile King of Utopia declares his country a “company limited”.
As Ireland is joked about in parenthetical asides, Gilbert makes an interestingly modern observation. In his passion for all things British, the Utopian regent makes no distinction at all between “Englishness” and “Britishness”.
Touring Scotland until November 13: scottishopera.org.uk
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