Compiled by Steve Pfarrer | Daily Hampshire Gazette

NORTHAMPTON — Valley Light Opera is returning to the Academy of Music with a new Gilbert & Sullivan production, though it’s one the community-based troupe has not tackled in many years: “Iolanthe.”

Gilbert & Sullivan created a long list of comic operas that featured broad humor, satire of the Victorian era, and a certain amount of camp and absurdity. But “Iolanthe” might be the duo’s most fanciful creation, a story that brings together fairies, members of the British Parliament, and an enchanted forest. CONTINUE READING

By Cori Urban | Special to The Republican

Some would say “Iolanthe” is the greatest operetta from the collaboration of William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan.

The show combines all the elements that had characterized their successes, said Theodore A. Blaisdell, stage director of the upcoming production at the Academy of Music in Northampton: “Gilbert’s witty dialogue lampooning the strict conventions of Victorian society set to Sullivan’s light-hearted but complex music (lampooning, at one point, Richard Wagner’s operatic style). Combine this with, for the first time on stage, electronic fairy lights adorning the costumes of the fairies!” CONTINUE READING