Date & Time
The ardent song of a Venetian gondolier will be heard over East Meadow when the Gilbert & Sullivan Light Opera Company of Long Island premieres its 2019 production of the classic Savoy opera The Gondoliers, with full orchestra, at Parkway Elementary School on Saturday, June 22, at 8 p.m.
Directed by Gayden Wren, with music directed by Helen Kim, The Gondoliers is the most effortlessly beautiful of the Gilbert & Sullivan operas, with a typically zany plot about a pair of gondoliers whose carefree life is disrupted when it turns out that one of them is the long-lost king of Barataria—but nobody can tell which one of them.
The score for The Gondoliers is packed with famous songs, including the pining ballad “Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes,” the rattling patter song “In Enterprise of Martial Kind,” the ingenious argument quartet “In a Contemplative Fashion” and the bouncy “Rising Early in the Morning.” The opera is a merry farce that’s as funny now as it was a century ago. It’s guaranteed fun for the whole family.