Rehearsals for 'The Gondoliers'

Every Sunday evening rehearsals will be held at the New English School in Jabriya 7-9pm. All welcome.
The Ahmadi Music Group will be staging this opera by Gilbert and Sullivan in May 2010.
www.ahmadimusicgroup.com

The Gondoliers tells the story of Marco and Giuseppe Palmieri. In the true spirit of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Topsy Turveydom", one of them is the rightful King of Barataria – but nobody knows who, as their father was partial to a few too many drinks, and mixed up which of the babies was the heir to the throne and which was his own son. As Barataria needs a king to put down unrest in the country they both travel there to take up the reins of government jointly, until they can find out who is the real heir. But only their foster mother, presently at large, knows which one is the true king.
It turns out that the real king was wed in infancy to the beautiful daughter of the Spanish Duke of Plaza Toro, and so it seems he is an unintentional bigamist. When the young Spaniard and the two Venetian wives all show up wanting to know which of them is queen, complications arise. No worries: The true identity of the king is revealed, and all is combed out spectacularly well by the end.

The original production of this show at the Savoy Theatre in 1889 ran for 554 performances and (according to the Gilbert and Sullivan archive) was performed privately to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. Sadly, this was the last of the Gilbert and Sullivan shows written before they began to fall out - reportedly over the cost of a new carpet for the Savoy Theatre.