This Week on Exploring Music

 

Intimate Voices

Reflections on a life in the string quartet business with Samuel Rhodes and David Finckel.

 

The Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Austin present Princess Ida

The Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Austin is proud to present its Summer 2013 Grand Production of Princess Ida, or Castle Adamant. Princess Ida satirizes feminism, women’s education, masculine pugnacity and militarism, grand opera, and Darwinian evolution – all controversial topics in conservative Victorian England.  It is based on a narrative poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson called “The Princess” (1847). 

This melodic and hilarious comic opera features proto-feminist Princess Ida, the daughter of King Gama. The princess founds 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, whom Ida had been engaged to in infancy, sneaks into the university along with two friends with the aim of claiming his bride.  They disguise themselves as women students but are soon discovered, their male invasion instigating a hilarious war between the sexes.

The performances will be at the Worley Barton Theater at Brentwood Christian School from June 13-23. Purchase tickets here.

Artistic Director Ralph MacPhail, Jr. returns for his 13th summer with the Society, along with Jeffrey Jones-Ragona, enjoying his 17th season as Music Director. The outstanding cast is headed by B. Iden Payne multiple nominees Michelle Haché (Princess Ida), Holton Johnson (Hilarion), and Arthur DiBianca (King Gama).