Engaging zest: Mike Leigh’s production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance returns to ENO with a cast mixing innocence & experience

Gilbert & Sulllivan: The Pirates of Penzance – The Pirates: William Morgan, Gaynor Keeble, Henry Neill, & chorus – English National Opera, 2024 (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Gilbert & Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance; Isabelle Peters, William Morgan, Richard Suart, John Savournin, Gaynor Keeble, James Creswell, director: Mike Leigh/Sarah Tipple, conductor: Natalie Murray Beale; English National Opera at the London Coliseum
Reviewed 4 December 2024

A welcome opportunity to bask in the many delights of a full-scale performance of Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic gem performed with engaging zest by a cast mixing innocence and experience

The Pirates of Penzance was Gilbert & Sullivan’s fifth collaboration, though the first two were one-act operas (Thespis and Trial by Jury) and the third was the relatively unsuccessful The Sorcerer. The Pirates of Penzance was only the second major success, coming after HMS Pinafore and being followed by Patience and Iolanthe. The Gilbert’s plot of the opera is particularly mad, drawing on ideas from from his shorter earlier pieces. It is, to an extent, an experimental piece, the two  collaborators were still seeing what could be made to work. It lacks the overall sense of atmosphere and place that their best works have, though it includes Gilbert’s knack of putting together two or three contrasting ideas and, with ineffable logic, turning things completely on their head.

It is a relatively compact work, and what keeps it in the repertoire is the enormous zest of the whole thing combined with Sullivan’s music. Sullivan wrote it working with remarkable speed, and flying in chunks of their first collaboration, Thespis, the results are a flow of melody, and a series of operatic parodies that make the work great fun. Sullivan’s operatic parodies, and his use of dramatic recitative bring a wonderful sense of bathos to the work, and help send up the crazier elements in traditional grand opera. It is, perhaps, no surprise, that Verdi’s Il Trovatore features heavily in the parodies, but the heroine’s coloratura in Poor wand’ring one would clearly have chimed in with many opera lovers. It is a device Sullivan would use again, for instance in Ruddigore, Mad Margaret introduces herself with a parody of an operatic mad scene.

English National Opera has revived Mike Leigh‘s 2015 production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. We caught the second performance, on Wednesday 4 December 2024 at the London Coliseum. Sarah Tipple was the revival director and Natalie Murray Beale, conducted, designs are by Alison Chitty, with Richard Suart as the Major General, John Savournin as the Pirate King, William Morgan as Frederic, Isabelle Peters as Mabel, Gaynor Keeble as Ruth, James Creswell as the Sergeant of Police, Henry Neill as Samuel, Bethan Langford as Edith, and Anna Elizabeth Cooper as Kate.

Gilbert & Sulllivan: The Pirates of Penzance – Hymn to Poetry: end of Act I – English National Opera, 2024 (Photo: Craig Fuller)

The production places Alison Chitty’s traditional, period costumes complete with pirates straight out of a children’s book, against a series of vividly coloured, abstract yet highly dramatic sets that bring out the cartoonish quality of the whole. The production was originally shared with Luxembourg and Saarbrücken and you feel that the production was designed to work well in smaller theatres and sometimes the vast open spaces of the London Coliseum stage, emphasised by the flat blocks of colour in Chitty’s designs, rather dwarf the singers. This, of course, leads back to the eternal problem of doing G&S in the London Coliseum and you can’t help wishing that ENO would bite the bullet and develop a relationship with a medium sized theatre where operetta could be made to work.

Without any major directorial interventions, and presenting the piece clearly and comprehensibly, what came over was the vein of misogyny in Gilbert’s texts. Not only is the his standard trope of the ‘elderly’ woman in love (Ruth is claimed to be 47 and is clearly vigorous and agile), emphasising her lack of beauty, but in Frederic’s solo ‘Oh, is there not one maiden breast?’ his second verse suggested that any ugly, pock-marked young woman would do! And in this performance, William Morgan sang the words beautifully clearly!

Natalie Murray Beale kept the orchestra on a tight rein during the overture (written by Alfred Cellier under Sullivan’s instructions). Not that it was rigid, but there was a discipline here, a sense of tightness to the rhythms and not allowing the crashes and bangs to disrupt too early. This was very much her attitude, discipline allied to flexibility, and the whole opera zipped along without you ever feeling rushed. During the Major General’s song you sensed the Richard Suart (an experience G&S stalwart) had subtly different ideas to the way things should go to Murray Beale and there was a sense of push-pull to the song.

Gilbert & Sulllivan: The Pirates of Penzance – John Savournin, Gaynor Keeble & the Pirates plus a few departing daughters – English National Opera, 2024 (Photo: Craig Fuller)

The cast mixed innocence and experience, ENO Harewood Artists and former Harewood Artists alongside G&S stalwarts such as John Savournin as the Pirate King [a role he sang in his own whimsical nursery toy box production at Opera Holland Park in 2021, see my review] and Richard Suart as the Major General (a role he performed at ENO in 2004).

Isabelle Peters made a winning Mabel, singing with engaging charm and milking the role for all it is worth. ‘Poor wand’ring one’ was a delight and felt part of the opera rather than a moment when the soprano was auditioning for her next Donizetti role. In an ideal world, she would be doing the role in a slightly smaller theatre, but she sang with an elegant sense of line that drew us in.

William Morgan (whose previous appearance at ENO was as Tamino in Mozart’s The Magic Flute earlier this year) made an ardent Frederic. He never gets a real belter of a hit number, but ‘Oh, is there not one maiden breast?’ had a vibrant lyricism to it, whilst his duet with Peters in Act Two (when Frederic is returning to be a pirate) was indeed rather touching. One of the things that made this performance was the sense of relationship that Morgan and Peters brought to their interactions.

Gaynor Keeble as a vigorously game Ruth, highly active on stage and giving her solo her all, making Gilbert’s misogyny feel rather touching.

Gilbert & Sulllivan: The Pirates of Penzance – Isabelle Peters, William Morgan – English National Opera, 2024 (Photo: Craig Fuller)

As the Major General, you felt veteran baritone Richard Suart was to a certain extent husbanding his resources and his more dramatic moments lacked amplitude. But in his major numbers, the Major General’s song in Act One and his solos in Act Two, Suart’s ability to get the words across on a thread of sound was brilliant. His performance of his patter song was masterly and contrasting distinctly with my rather underwhelming experience of patter at ENO’s recent The Elixir of Love [see my review].

John Savournin brought elan and a lovely over the top swagger to the Pirate King from his opening solo down to the Queen of the Night like reappearance in Act Two, heightened by his dressing up box style costume. And James Creswell was luxury casting as the rather dim and definitely cowardly but fabulously voiced Sergeant of the Police.

The smaller roles were all well taken. Henry Neill gave strong support as Samuel, making him stand out very much as a distinct character. Bethan Langford as Edith, and Anna Elizabeth Cooper as Kate were lively and characterful as the two lead daughters, managing to make the solo passages very distinct.

Gilbert & Sulllivan: The Pirates of Penzance – Gaynor Keeble, William Morgan, John Savournin – English National Opera, 2024 (Photo: Craig Fuller)

One of the delights of the piece is the array of ensembles, many of them memorable. I was particularly taken with the Paradox trio for Ruth, Pirate King and Frederic, where Keeble, Savournin and Morgan were clearly having fun yet also putting over Gilbert and Sullivan’s deftly engaging combination of text and music. The operatic parodies and moments bathetic drama were mined for all they were worth.

The chorus has a lot to do in the opera, and plenty of the choruses are memorable too, with the chorus getting their fare share of Verdi parodies, along with the prize send up of the operatic solo where the soloist does not acknowledge the presence of the accompanying chorus. This was not a dancing production, there was plenty of movement but the chorus were not required to be extensive hoofers, however they were a vivid presence throughout.

Gilbert & Sulllivan: The Pirates of Penzance – Richard Suart, with Gaynor Keeble, John Savournin, William Morgan, the Pirates & the Policemen – English National Opera, 2024 (Photo: Craig Fuller)

There is plenty of small and medium scale Gilbert and Sullivan in London, and you have to laud the smaller companies that create vivid and theatrically engaging productions with reduced forces. But Sullivan’s music deserves to be heard with the full forces for which it was written. So, for all my strictures about G&S in the London Coliseum, it was a complete delight to hear a reasonably full chorus (we had 12 daughters, and in the work’s original production there were probably 20), and Sullivan’s complete orchestra with the ENO Orchestra on fine form. It is important ENO does a wide range of opera from ancient to contemporary, but there are strong arguments continuing to take Gilbert and Sullivan’s collaborations as seriously as this.

The opera featured current and former ENO Harewood Artists and they currently have the Harewood Artists Match Campaign going; until Sunday 8 December all donations will be matched, do support them.

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