IOLANTHE
 OR THE PEER AND THE PERI
  
Iolanthe opened on 25 November 1882 at both the Savoy Theatre in London and the Standard Theater in New York.   This was unique.
 
 
Gilbert had written The Fairy Curate, one of his Bab Ballads, some years earlier, and it made fun of a marriage between a fairy and a mortal.    He began thinking of an opera on the same theme, with a fairy marrying a solicitor, but later this became a chorus of fairies marrying barristers. Still later, the theme was changed to a political area with the Fairy Queen marrying the Prime Minister.  
 
In the end, Iolanthe was set ín the House of Lords, it was the Fairy Queen and the Lord Chancellor, and the fairies would fall in love with peers.      
 
Iolanthe was the first opera written for performance at the Savoy.   At the first performance, copies of the libretto were made available to the audience.   The house lights could not be greatly dimmed, so the audience could follow the text,
 
which seemed on that occasion to increase their enjoyment immensely.    The fairies had stars on their heads, which were powered  by batteries.
 
Iolanthe ran for 398 performances at the Savoy.
 
 
In Iolanthe, a fairy, Iolanthe, had married a mortal twenty-five years earlier.  Technically, this was a capital offence, but the Fairy Queen had reduced the sentence to banishment for life, on condition that Iolanthe left her husband and never communicated with him again.      The fairies prevail upon the Fairy Queen to pardon Iolanthe, and she is summoned from her exile. 
  
Iolanthe had a son, Strephon, an Arcadian shepherd, who is half fairy; he is a fairy down to the waist, but his legs are mortal.    Strephon loves Phyllis, who is a Ward of Court.   Phyllis loves Strephon, but is unaware of his fairyhood.     
All of the members of the House of Lords are attracted by Phyllis, and appeal to the Lord Chancellor to give her to whichever Lord she selects. 
 
From then on, things are chaotic, with Strephon becoming a Member of Parliament, all the mortals become fairies and when it ends they all fly away to fairyland.