THE GONDOLIERS

 

 

 

The Gondoliers opened at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for 554 performances.   It was the twelfth opera of Gilbert and Sullivan.

 

The Gondoliers is one of the most popular Gilbert and Sullivan operas.   It has less dialogue than the other Savoy operas but some of Sullivan’s most humorous music.   The Gondoliers satirises snobbery, which is evident in the gondoliers , Duke,  Duchess, Grand Inquisitor and almost everybody else.

 

Act I of  The Gondoliers is set in Venice,  and opens with twenty-four young maidens singing of their passionate love of two gondoliers, Marco and Giuseppe Palmieri.   The  maidens are waiting for Marco and Giuseppe to choose brides before other suitors will be considered.  When Marco and Giuseppe arrive, they do not wish to say that they prefer any particular maiden, and suggest blind man’s buff..   Eventually, Marco catches Gianetta and Giuseppe Tessa, and they get married.

 

His Grace the Duke of Plaza-Toro, Her Grace the Duchess, their daughter Casilda, and

their private drummer, Luiz,  all arrive in Venice.   They are to meet the Grand Inquisitor

of Spain.   When Casilda was six months old, she was married by proxy to the infant son

and heir of the King of Barataria.   Shortly after the ceremony, the King had become a

Wesleyan Methodist of the most bigoted and persecuting type.   The Grand Inquisitor

caused Casilda’s husband to be stolen and taken to Venice, to preserve the monarchy.    The King had been killed in an insurrection a fortnight before.   The purpose of the visit by the Duke of Plaza-Toro was to ascertain the whereabouts of Casilda’s husband and to hail her as Her Majesty, the reigning Queen of Barataria.When the Duke of Plaza-Toro meets the Grand Inquisitor, Don Alhambra del Bolero, the Grand Inquisitor explains that he left the Prince with a highly respectable gondolier in Venice who promised to rear him with his own babe.   The gondolier drank rather a lot, could not distinguish between his own babe and the Prince, and had died.   However, the two babes were now gondoliers, one or other was the Prince and they would be present  soon, with the nurse to whom the Prince was entrusted.  The gondoliers were Marco and Giuseppe Palmieri and the nurse was the mother of Luiz.

 

Act II of The Gondoliers  is set in Barataria, and opens with Marco and Giuseppe seated on two thrones, and the gondoliers all enjoying themselves without reference to social distinctions.   The Gondoliers  continues to a happy conclusion.