Trial by Jury & HMS Pinafore

Wellington G&S Light Opera is proud to announce the hilarious double bill performance and tour of Trial By Jury & HMS Pinafore with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert.

Trial by Jury is a delightful and short opera, only forty minutes, and alone of the G&S operas contains no spoken dialogue. There are many people who consider it to be the most perfectly constructed of the whole series and it is indeed a little gem of wit, sentiment and charm.

The absurdities that can come from a breach of promise case, when the sensibilities of the jury and the judge are affected, was just the sort of subject to inspire Gilbert, who had originally trained to be a lawyer, and the libretto he produced in turn inspired Sullivan to write some of his most sparkling music.

HMS Pinafore was the fourth collaboration between Gilbert & Sullivan and their first blockbuster hit. Pinafore is among the most popular Gilbert and Sullivan operas, perhaps because of its infectious tunes and generally well-constructed libretto.

Gilbert embued HMS Pinafore with mirth and silliness to spare. The opera's gentle satire reprises and builds upon one of The Sorcerer's themes: Love between members of different social classes. The gentlemanly Captain of the Pinafore, who claims that he would never swear at his crew (What, Never?), does not know that his daughter has fallen in love with a common sailor serving on her father's ship. Fear not: it all works out in the end!

We welcome Matthew Ross, concertmaster of the Vector Wellington Orchestra, as our conductor for this season. Direction is by Gillian Jerome, who directed our successful G&S seasons of Iolanthe 2008 and Yeomen of the Guard 2009.

This comic opera double bill will be fully staged and accompanied by the 30-piece WGSLO orchestra.

Directed by Gillian Jerome
Musical direction by Matthew Ross
On tour 30 June – 23 July
Wellington / Kapiti / Palmerston North / Wanganui