Conducted by Richard Cock.
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera’s official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879. Its London debut was on 3 April 1880, at the Opera Comique. Pirates was the fifth Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration and introduced the much-parodied “Major-General’s Song“. Fiction and plays about pirates were ubiquitous in the 19th century. Walter Scott‘s The Pirate (1822) and James Fenimore Cooper‘s The Red Rover were key sources for the romanticised, dashing pirate image and the idea of repentant pirates. The Pirates of Penzance absurdly treats stealing as a professional career path, with apprentices and tools of the trade such as the crowbar and life preserver.
The Symphony Choir performance will be a so called concert performance not a stage performance.