January 19, 1999
The KU Opera production is being staged by John A. Stephens, professor of voice, with musical direction by Mark T. Ferrell, associate professor of vocal coaching and accompanying. Scenic design is Michael Reese, Lawrence, with costume design by Cynthia Evans Dahlberg, Lawrence, and lighting design by Frank Schultz, Topeka.
"Iolanthe," subtitled "The Peer and the Peri," has a cast of 11 principals and a chorus of 11 singing the roles of dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, barons and fairies. Pianists for the production are Ferrell and Lisa Ann Roush, Chanute graduate student.
General admission tickets for the KU Opera production are now on sale in the KU box offices: Lied Center, 864-ARTS; Murphy Hall, 864-3982, SUA, 864-3477. Tickets are $7 for the public and $5 for students and senior citizens. Both VISA and MasterCard are accepted for phone orders.
Set in an Arcadian landscape, then in the Palace Yard at Westminster somewhere between 1700 and the present, the opera tells the story of Iolanthe, a fairy who committed the capital crime of marrying a mortal. At the time of the crime, the Queen of the Fairies commuted the death sentence to banishment for life on the condition that Iolanthe must leave her husband without explanation and never see him again.
Iolanthe's half-fairy, half-human son, Strephon, is a shepherd who loves Phyllis, a shepherdess; she returns his love and knows nothing of his mixed origins.
As the opera begins, the Queen is prevailed upon by other fairies to recall Iolanthe from exile. Strephon joins the glad reunion and announces his intention of marrying Phyllis in spite of her guardian's refusal of permission. The Queen approves and plans to use her influence to get Strephon elected to Parliament.
Meanwhile, the entire House of Lords is enamored of Phyllis; they appeal as a body to the Lord Chancellor to give her to whichever peer she may select. The Lord Chancellor, who is also suffering from the pangs of love, feels he has no legal right to assign Phyllis to himself. When Phyllis declines to marry a peer, Strephon pleads his case in court -- again in vain. Iolanthe enters to hold a tender conversation with her son, but since she, like all fairies, looks like a girl of 17, Phyllis and the peers misinterpret the situation and ridicule Strephon's claim that Iolanthe is his mother. Phyllis declares she will marry one of two lords wooing her.
The Fairies take their revenge. They send Strephon to Parliament and influence both Houses to pass any bills he may introduce. One of his innovations is a bill to throw the peerage open to diagnostic examination. The Peers, seeing their doom approaching, appeal to the Fairies to desist. The Fairies have fallen in love with the Peers and would like to oblige, but it is too late to stop Strephon. The Queen reproaches her subjects for their feminine weakness, but acknowledges her own weakness for a sentry.
Phyllis' two suitors discover that if either marries her, family tradition will require the loser to kill his successful rival; both therefore renounce Phyllis in the name of friendship. The Lord Chancellor pleads his own cause before himself and convinces himself that the law will allow him to marry her.
Meanwhile, Strephon makes Phyllis understand his mother is a fairy and they persuade Iolanthe to appeal to the Lord Chancellor. To make the appeal effective, she reveals her identity to him -- her husband -- and again incurs the death penalty. But the other Fairies have now married their respective Peers and announce to the Queen that they all deserve the same sentence. The Lord Chancellor suggests changing the law to read that every fairy who does not marry a mortal shall die. The Queen corrects the scroll and asks her sentry to save her life by marrying her. All the mortals present are then transformed into fairies and fly away with their consorts to Fairyland, leaving the House of Lords to be replenished according to intelligence rather than birth.