Gala celebration of G&S in Chichester

Their Gala Celebration of Gilbert & Sullivan will be at the venue on January 19, featuring favourites from The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore, Yeomen, Gondoliers and Iolanthe, plus some gems that may be less familiar. They will be performed by singers from Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera, Opera North, Garsington, Carl Rosa and D’Oyly Carte including Alexander Robin Baker, Rebecca Bottone, Barry Clark, Siân Dicker, Yvonne Howard, Lauren Joyanne Morris and Matthew Siveter with a 26-piece orchestra, led by conductor Martin Handley (ENO, BBC Concert Orchestra, Australian Opera and regular presenter for BBC Radio 3).

Martin, a co-founder of Tarantara, said: “I think generally Gilbert & Sullivan have had a bit of a bad press really. What I mean by that is that people seem to think that they are rather fusty, that they are for elderly people and that they are rather cliched. And they are definitely not! I think the problem was that with the whole thing being run by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, it meant that everything was rather held in aspic for a long time. Gilbert made really tight productions which were great, I'm sure, in their time, but they are not great if people then decide that they have to be completely preserved as they were and that you're not allowed to change anything for a century.