Reviewed by James Karas
Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance is this year’s “light” entertainment offered by the Glimmerglass Festival. We get a vibrant, enthusiastic, well-sung and simply delightful production of a classic operetta that is near the top of its genre.
These “pirates”, in case you have not met them before, are flying their skull and cross flag not in the Caribbean or South Pacific or the high seas. They ply their profession off the coast of Cornwall, England and they follow a strict moral code that leaves them broke. For example, they will not steal from or interfere with orphans. And they quickly find out that all English merchant ships are manned by orphans.
One of the pirates is a young man called Frederic (Christian Mark Gibbs) who was supposed to be apprenticed as a pilot but his nurse Ruth (Eve Gagliotti) made a phonetic error and apprenticed him as a pirate! (Where is Professor Higgins when you need him?) Frederic is bound to serve on the pirate ship until his 21st birthday and he respects and abides by his duty and waits for his 21st birthday to be discharged. But he was born in a leap year and has a birthday every four years on February 29. Oops!
We have a hero with a chronological disorder but also a hero who has not seen a pretty woman until his eyes fall on Mabel (Elizabeth Sutphen) and he falls in love with her. She is not just a pretty face and a lovely voice but the daughter of the very model of a Major-General Stanley (Troy Cook) which gives her class.
The Pirates has the rigorous demands of an operetta. The plot is comic, farcical, bouncy and demands disciplined performances by the leads and the chorus. The patter songs sound wonderful but they are not easy to perform. The Glimmerglass Festival production under director and choreographer Sean Curran and conductor Joseph Colaneri with the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra and Chorus put together and maintain a lively, funny and delightfully entertaining rhythm and pace.
Christian Mark Gibbs as the naïve, heroic and loveable Frederic has a superb tenor voice and we root for his upstanding respect for duty and his love for Mabel. Troy Cook gets the juicy role of Major-General Stanley and delivers the famous patter aria “I’m the Very Model of a Modern Major General.” It’s a long and tough slog getting all those rhymes and unfamiliar words in but Cook handles the whole thing with aplomb.
His daughter Mabel as the heroine who gets the heroic Frederic is exactly what the audience wants and precisely what the hero deserves. Ruth is another wonderful role and Ruth Gigliotti takes full advantage of its comic opportunities and vocal demands. Craig Irvin shines as the proud Pirate King.
The pretty young maidens make a beautiful chorus as do the policemen under their Sergeant (Joshua Thomas). Combined with the verve of the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra under Colaneri, we got a wonderful evening at the opera on the shores of Lake Otsego.
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The Pirates of Penzance by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan is being performed as part of the Glimmerglass Festival at the Alice Busch Opera Theater, Cooperstown, New York. Tickets and information (607) 547-0700 or www.glimmerglass.org
James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press
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