#DiscoverGSA

About #DiscoverGSA

Like many organizations and families around the world, Gilbert & Sullivan Austin has adapted to the challenges presented by a global pandemic. We've found comfort in sharing our past performances with you digitally on YouTube through our #DiscoverGSA digital series, and we're not slowing down. Join us on February 19th as we premiere, for the first time, the digital recording of our 2013 Grand Production Princess Ida.

About the show

This melodic and hilarious comic opera features proto-feminist Princess Ida (Michelle Haché), the daughter of King Gama (Arthur DiBianca). The princess has founded a women's university from which all men are barred, and she and her faculty teach that women are superior to men and should rule in their stead. Romantic Prince Hilarion (Holton Johnson), to whom Ida had been engaged in infancy, sneaks into the university along with two friends with the aim of claiming Hilarion’s bride. They disguise themselves as women students but are soon discovered, their male invasion instigating a hilarious war between the sexes.

Princess Ida satirizes feminism, women’s education, masculine pugnacity and militarism, grand opera, and Darwinian evolution, some of which were controversial topics in conservative Victorian England. Ida is the only three-act Gilbert & Sullivan opera and opened at the Savoy Theatre on January 5, 1884, for a run of 246 performances.

Michelle Haché won the Outstanding Lead Actress in Musical Theater award at the 2012-2013 season B. Iden Payne ceremony for her role as Princess Ida. Jeffrey Jones-Ragona was nominated for Outstanding Music Direction for his wonderful work as musical director.