IOLANTHE 2012
Iolanthe or the Peer and the Peri, the seventh collaboration between Gilbert & Sullivan, debuted at the Savoy Theatre on November 25, 1882, three nights after the final performance of Patience. Iolanthe's initial run lasted for 398 performances.
Plot Summary of Iolanthe
Iolanthe or The Peer and the Peri, was first performed in 1882, and is considered by many to be Gilbert’s most pointed attack on the House of Lords and the aristocracy as ineffective and dim-witted. The plot is so absurd, however, that the satirical elements are presented in an atmosphere of great fun and hard to take too seriously. (On the other hand, there may have been a reason that Sullivan, the sublime composer, was knighted in 1883, and Gilbert, the master of barbed wit, was not given a knighthood until 1907.)
Twenty-five years before the opera begins, Iolanthe, a fairy, has committed a capital offense by marrying a mortal. The Queen of the Fairies commuted the penalty to lifelong exile on condition that Iolanthe leave her husband and never see him again.
Iolanthe’s son Strephon is half mortal, half fairy (his legs are the mortal part). He lives as a simple shepherd and has fallen madly in love with Phyllis (a classical name for shepherdesses) who is a Ward of the Court of Chancery. Unfortunately, the entire House of Lords has also fallen in love with Phyllis, most especially the Lord Chancellor her guardian.
Phyllis insists on marrying Strephon rather than any peer. But then she spies her beloved in tender conversation with his mother Iolanthe. Since fairies never age and Iolanthe looks like a girl of 18, no one believes that Iolanthe is Strephon’s mother. Phyllis is so convinced of Strephon’s infidelity that she agrees to marry one of two peers, either Mountararat or Tolloller.
The enraged fairies take revenge on the peers by sending Strephon to Parliament, casting a spell to make all the peers pass any bill that Strephon proposes, including one providing for entry to Parliament based on intelligence instead of class! This state of affairs is, of course, intolerable.
A resolution is achieved when the fairies all marry the peers (whom they inexplicably find attractive), transforming them into immortals and whisking them off to Fairyland. Thus the House of Lords is left to be filled according to intelligence rather than birth.