Description
William Schwenk Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900)Princess Ida, or 'Castle Adamant'The three-act comic opera Princess Ida appeared,chronologically, between Iolanthe (1882) and TheMikado (1885) and was first performed under the batonof the composer, on 5th January 1884 at the'electrically-lighted' Savoy Theatre. Its initialproduction ran for 246 performances (with a firstAmerican production opening in parallel at New York'sFifth Avenue Theatre, on 11th February). Billed a'respectful Operatic Per-Version of Tennyson's\Princess ', it was a re-working by Gilbert of his ownunsuccessful 1870 burlesque The Princess, itself a satireof Tennyson's narrative poem, but whereas in ThePrincess: A Medley (1847; augmented in 1853) the PoetLaureate had eagerly anticipated female emancipation,in Princess Ida the conservative Gilbert reaffirmed hisown more sceptical view of the feminist movement, astance which, after the establishment during the 1870sof women's colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, wasalready becoming unfashionable.Peter Dempsey""