Back الأميرة إدا Arabic الاميره ادا ARZ Princess Ida Catalan Princess Ida Spanish Princess Ida French Princess Ida Italian Princess Ida SIMPLE Princess Ida Swedish

Princess Ida

This article is about the Gilbert & Sullivan opera. For the video game character, see Monument Valley (video game).

Elaborate illustration showing the character Hilarion, disguised as a woman, speaking to Princess Ida during an outdoor picnic. Ida wears a crown and is seated on a chair; in the middle of the image, Hilarion crouches beside her to her left, with two of his friends to his left, also disguised as women. Several other women are seated around a picnic blanket on grassy ground with a brick wall in the background, all wearing academic robes; two women, dressed as medieval peasants, are serving the diners from above and behind.
Illustration by W. Russell Flint, 1909: luncheon scene Act II: Hilarion (disguised as a woman) speaks with Ida.

Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was their eighth operatic collaboration of fourteen; the next was The Mikado. Princess Ida opened at the Savoy Theatre on 5 January 1884 and ran for 246 performances. The piece concerns a princess who founds a women's university and teaches that women are superior to men and should rule in their stead. Prince Hilarion, to whom she had been betrothed in infancy, sneaks into the university, together with two friends, with the aim of collecting his bride. They disguise themselves as women students, but are discovered, and all soon face a literal war between the sexes.

The opera satirizes feminism, women's education and Darwinian evolution, which were controversial topics in conservative Victorian England. Princess Ida is based on a narrative poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson called The Princess (1847), and Gilbert had written a farcical musical play, based on the poem, in 1870. He lifted much of the dialogue of Princess Ida directly from his 1870 farce. It is the only Gilbert and Sullivan opera in three acts and the only one with dialogue in blank verse.

Though its original run was modestly profitable, by Savoy opera standards, Princess Ida was not considered a success due, in part, to a particularly hot summer in London in 1884, and it was not revived in London until 1919. Nevertheless, the piece is performed regularly today by both professional and amateur companies, although not as frequently as the most popular of the Savoy operas.

Developed by StudentB