"Iolanthe"

Feilding Star, Volume IX, Issue 71, 3 December 1887, Page 3

"lolanthe"

Gilbert and Sullivan's opera "lolanthe," to be performed in Feilding on Thursday, December Bth is full of life and fun, abounding in quaint verbiage, and ludicrous situations. The music like all of Sullivan's compositions, is not merely pretty and taking, | but is good, from the musician's point of view. The scene of the first act is | Arcadia — -A bevy of fairies dance in and trip around the fairy-ring, after which they fall to discoursing on the great loss fairy society has incurred through the banishment of lolanthe — a very popular fairy who has been banished because she has been so injudicious as to marry a mortal, and this sentence she is working* out at the bottom pf a stream. The fairies petition their queen to pardon her, and she agreed to do so. lolanthe is therefore invoked from her damp abode. In answer to the questions of the queen, lolanthe says her reason for living at the bottom of the stream was to be near the son of Strephon, who it appears is now twenty-four years of age, and extremely pretty, but rather inclined to be stout. Strephon enters, and is introduced to his fairy relatives. He is engaged to an Arcadian' shepherdess named Phyllis, but she is a Ward in Chancery, and the Lord Chancellor has refused his consent to their being united. Strephon is somewhat jealous of the House of Lords, of whom twenty-five Conservative peers, are attached to Phyllis. He therefore persuades her to marry him at once, and they dance off together. Then enters a procession of noblemen who have met to arrange which of them shall marry Phyllis. Phyllis is summoned to the bar of the House, where she creates a sensation among the Lords. They all cast their coronets at her feet, but she refuses them all, declaring that her heart is already given. The Lord Chancellor demands who has dared to thus disobey the Court of Chancery. Strephon bursts into the conclave, and Phyllis rushes into his arms. The peers march off, dignified and stately, and the Lord ' Chancellor separates* Strephon from Phyllis, and orders her away, and after giving Strephon a piece of his mind, goe«> off too. lolanthe enters, and endeavours to comfort her son when Phyllis and the peers returning, and suppose the two to be making love, for lolanthe being an immortal appears to be only about seventeen years old. A scene of recrimination ensues, and Strephon is rejected by Phyllis. Strephon then invokes the, aid of the fairies who enter and surround him. He relates to them his trouble, and the Fairy Queen tells the. peers that they've, done him an injustice for the Lady is his mother, which statement they scornfully rejeot, as they cannot be made to believe that a maid of seventeen is the mother of a man of four and twenty. In the second act the scene is laid in Palace Yard. Westminister, during the Session of Parliament. The sentry on duty sings & meditative song about political mat* ters; and the fairies dance in, rejoicing that Strephon' s a member of Parliament, and oarrying everything before* him. The peers enter from Westminister Hall, grieving over the same f act ; but the fairies have taken to greatly admiring the peers, who however, will not reciprocate. The Fairy Queen enters and finds the fairies gazing wistfully after the peers, for which she abuses them roundly, admitting, however, that it is only a sense of duty that prevents her giving way to the sentry as her ideal. Queen and fairies all go off sorrowfully, and Phyllis enters, attended by the two earls, to whom she is now engaged. She cannot decide between them. Phyllis and Strephon meet, and she learns of his f airyhood, and so understands his mother's appearing younger than himself. lolanthe joins them, and they entreat her to beg the Lord Chancellor to consent to their marriage. She hesitates, but tells them that Lord Chancellor is her husband and Strephon's father; and her sentence of death would be enforced by the Queen were she to reveal her continued existence to her husband, who had thought her dead for twenty-five years. She goes to the Lord ChanT oellor, i and tells hiinV>sbe -is his wife. The Fairy Queen aa^fcet^roojp enter

and the Queen is about to put lolanthe to death. When the fairies confess that they are all as bad ba lolanthe, for they have all married peers, and are now "fairy duchesses, marchionesses, countesses, viscountesses, and baronesses. The sentry (whom the Queen married), the Lord Chancellor and lolanthe, Strephon and Phyllis, peers and fairies then all pair off and fly away to fairyland.