" Similarly, the Theatre asserted that " the music of Iolanthe is Dr Sullivan's chef d ' oeuvre.

Iolanthe ; or, The Peer and the Peri () is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert.

Throughout Iolanthe, however, both author and composer managed to couch the criticism among such bouncy, amiable absurdities that it is all received as good humour.

It is also clear that Sullivan's musical setting was written to match the cadence of the word " Iolanthe ," and could only accommodate the word " Perola " by preceding it ( awkwardly ) with " O ", " Come " or " Ah ".

The Queen, unable to bear punishing her any longer, pardons Iolanthe, and she is warmly greeted by the other fairies.

The fairies laugh that Iolanthe appears too young to have a grown son, as one of the advantages of a fairy's immortality is that they never grow old.

The peers scoff at the seemingly absurd claim that Iolanthe is Strephon's mother (" She is, has been, my mother from my birth ").

The Lord Chancellor believes Iolanthe to have died childless, and she is bound not to " undeceive " him, under penalty of death.

Dismayed, Iolanthe desperately unveils, despite the warnings of the unseen Fairies, revealing that she is his long-lost wife, and that Strephon is his son.

The Lord Chancellor is amazed to see her alive, but Iolanthe has again broken fairy law, and the Fairy Queen is now left with no choice but to punish Iolanthe with death.

The tone of the song is dark and angry, in marked contrast with the generally genial tone of Iolanthe, and the lyrics make the case that bad behavior by the underclasses is caused by their unfortunate circumstances: " I might be as bad – as unlucky, rather – if I only had Fagin for a father.

" had composed a brilliant new score ( his most subtle yet ) to a scintillating libretto .... Iolanthe is the work in which Sullivan's operetta style takes a definite step forward, and metamorphosis of musical themes is its characteristic new feature .... By recurrence and metamorphosis of themes Sullivan made the score more fluid ...." Much of Sullivan's " fairy " music pays deliberate homage to the incidental music written by Felix Mendelssohn for a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Iolanthe is one of several of Gilbert's works, including The Wicked World, Broken Hearts, Fallen Fairies, and Princess Ida, where the introduction of males into a tranquil world of women brings " mortal love " that wreaks havoc with the status quo.

Although The Mountain Sylph is all but forgotten, it inspired parts of Gilbert and Sullivan's 1882 Savoy Opera, Iolanthe.

Pinafore ( 1878 ); Major-General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance, who is an expert at everything except " military knowledge " ( 1880 ); the aesthetic poet, Reginald Bunthorne in Patience ( 1881 ); the love-lonely Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe ( 1882 ); the sarcastic cripple, King Gama, in Princess Ida ( 1884 ); Ko-Ko the cheap tailor, elevated to the post of Lord High Executioner, in The Mikado ( 1885 ); the accursed Robin Oakapple in Ruddigore ( 1887 ); and the pathetic jester, Jack Point, in The Yeomen of the Guard ( 1888 ).

Reginald Iolanthe Perrin is suffering a mid-life crisis, and tries to escape his dreary life.

The form of the name in Greek is Iolanthe.

Sullivan had one installed as well, and on 13 May 1883, at a party to celebrate the composer's 41st birthday, the guests, including the Prince of Wales ( later Edward VII ), heard a direct relay of parts of Iolanthe from the Savoy.

Princess Ida is one of several Gilbert plays, including The Wicked World, Broken Hearts, Fallen Fairies, and Iolanthe, where the introduction of males into a tranquil world of women brings " mortal love " that wreaks havoc with the status quo.

" The latter paper judged Reed a success in his desire to play pathos: " His Jack Point, the lovelorn jester in The Yeomen of the Guard, and the role which he dubbed ' the one apart, the Hamlet of Gilbert and Sullivan ', could easily bring a tear to the eye, as did his spoken rendition of ' Iolanthe, thou livest?

In the course of their shows, they performed what amounted to the entire repertoire of light opera songs containing the word " gay ", additionally mining G & S classics as a rich source of double-entendre from ' The Gondoliers ' " Then One Of Us Will Be A Queen ", via Patience " blithe and gay " through to the story of Iolanthe, which famously had one dainty foot in fairyland.

69, ( sometimes Iolanthe ) () is a lyric opera in one act by Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

Although titled Iolanthe all along in Gilbert's plot book, for a time the piece was advertised as Perola and rehearsed under that name.

The last eight of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas were premièred at the Savoy: Iolanthe ( 1882 ), Princess Ida ( 1884 ), The Mikado ( 1885 ), Ruddigore ( 1887 ), The Yeomen of the Guard ( 1888 ) The Gondoliers ( 1889 ), Utopia, Limited ( 1893 ), and The Grand Duke ( 1896 ), and the term Savoy Opera has come to be associated with all their joint works.

It produced full scale productions of popular musicals and operettas including Oklahoma !, Carousel, The Mikado, Guys and Dolls, The Pirates of Penzance, Me and My Girl, My Fair Lady, The Yeoman of the Guard, Gigi, Fiddler on the Roof, The Gondoliers, Anything Goes, The Merry Widow, Iolanthe, The Producers and HMS Pinafore.

The music for the fairies reflects Wagner's style, and the score uses leitmotifs, including a distinctive four-note theme associated with the character of Iolanthe.

Later hits in the series were Iolanthe ( 1882 ), The Mikado ( 1885 ), The Yeomen of the Guard ( 1888 ) and The Gondoliers ( 1889 ).

Leonard Rossiter ( 21 October 1926 – 5 October 1984 ) was an English actor, best known for his roles as Rupert Rigsby, in the British comedy television series and film Rising Damp ( 1974 – 80 ), and Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin ( 1976 – 79 ).

Baker made the following G & S recordings with HMV: 1917 The Mikado ( Ko-Ko, Pish-Tush ( part ), and Pooh-Bah ( part )), 1919 The Gondoliers ( Antonio, Don Alhambra ( part ), Duke of Plaza-Toro and Giuseppe ); 1920 The Yeomen of the Guard ( Jack Point and Sergeant Meryll ( part )); 1920 The Pirates of Penzance ( Major-General Stanley ); 1921 Patience ( Bunthorne and Major ); and 1922 Iolanthe ( Lord Chancellor ).

John Barnett made a serious attempt to follow in the footsteps of Carl Maria von Weber with his opera The Mountain Sylph ( 1834 ), often mistakenly claimed as the first Sung-through ( i. e. completely sung ) English opera, which was a major success in its time ( and was later parodied by Gilbert and Sullivan in Iolanthe ).

Pinafore, Major-General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance ( a role that he gave up in 1969 ), Bunthorne in Patience, the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe, King Gama in Princess Ida, Ko-Ko in The Mikado, Robin Oakapple / Sir Ruthven in Ruddigore, Jack Point in The Yeomen of the Guard, the Duke of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers, and John Wellington Wells in The Sorcerer ( beginning with the 1971 revival ).

Pinafore ), Phyllis ( Iolanthe ) and Ruth ( The Pirates of Penzance ).

He returned to America later that year as music director of D ' Oyly Carte's New York and touring productions of Billee Taylor ( 1882 ), Les Manteaux Noirs and Rip Van Winkle ( both in the fall of 1882 ), and Iolanthe ( 1882 – 83 ), for the latter of which he prepared the New York overture.

Princess Ida ( 1884 ) spoofed women's education and male chauvinism and continued the theme from Iolanthe of the war between the sexes.

In 1966 she sang the role of Mad Margaret in Ruddigore, the title role in Iolanthe, and Melissa in Princess Ida, in a series of BBC radio Gilbert and Sullivan recordings.

As in Patience and Iolanthe, the two previous Gilbert and Sullivan operas, Princess Ida concerns the war between the sexes.

She immediately became principal soprano in a D ' Oyly Carte touring company, playing the roles of Elsie, Phyllis in Iolanthe, Yum-Yum in The Mikado, Princess Lucilla Chloris in His Majesty, and later adding the roles of Aline in The Sorcerer, and Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance.

In September 1951, exactly six years after joining the company, Pratt became the principal comedian following Green's departure, and he served in that capacity for the next eight seasons, playing Sir Joseph Porter in Pinafore, the Major-General in The Pirates of Penzance, Bunthorne in Patience, the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe, Ko-Ko in The Mikado, Robin in Ruddigore, Jack Point in The Yeomen of the Guard, the Duke of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers and King Gama in Princess Ida.

The previous Savoy opera, Iolanthe, closed after 398 performances on 1 January 1884, the same day that Sullivan composed the last of the musical numbers for Ida.

In Patience, the aesthetic-crazed women are contrasted with vain military men ; in Iolanthe, the vague and flighty fairies ( women ) are pitted against the ineffective, dim-witted peers ( men ); and in Ida, overly serious students and professors at a women's university ( women ) defy a marriage-by-force ultimatum by a militaristic king and his testosterone-laden court ( men ).

From thy dark exile thou art summoned " ( Queen, Iolanthe, Celia, Leila, and Chorus of Fairies )

" It may not be " ( Lord Chancellor, Iolanthe, and Chorus of Fairies )

The lengthy nature of the campaign was referred to in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Iolanthe, in which the Queen of the Fairies sings " He shall prick that annual blister, marriage with deceased wife's sister ".