Musical and Textual Analysis
The opera satirizes feminism, women's education, and Darwinian evolution, all of which were controversial topics in conservative Victorian England. In the 15 years between the time that Gilbert wrote The Princess and the premiere of Princess Ida, the movement for women's education had gained momentum in Britain, with the founding of Girton College (1869) and Newnham College (1871) at the University of Cambridge; and Somerville (1878) and Lady Margaret Hall (1878) at the University of Oxford. Westfield College in Hampstead, the University of London's first women's college, opened in 1882.
As in Patience and Iolanthe, the two previous Gilbert and Sullivan operas, Princess Ida concerns the war between the sexes. In Patience, the aesthetic-crazed women are contrasted with vain military men; in Iolanthe, the vague and flighty fairies (women) are pitted against the ineffective, dim-witted peers (men); and in Ida, overly serious students and professors at a women's university (women) defy a marriage-by-force ultimatum by a militaristic king and his testosterone-laden court (men). Princess Ida is one of several Gilbert plays, including The Wicked World, Broken Hearts, Fallen Fairies, and Iolanthe, where the introduction of males into a tranquil world of women brings "mortal love" that wreaks havoc with the status quo. Stedman calls this a "Gilbertian invasion plot".
Sullivan's score is majestic, and a sequence of songs in Act II, sometimes known as the "string of pearls", is particularly well loved. Sullivan used chromatic and scalar passages and key modulations throughout the score, and commenters have called the Act II quartet "The World Is But a Broken Toy" one of Sullivan's "most beautiful, plaintive melodies." It has also been called "Gounodesque". Although Gilbert's libretto contains many funny lines, the iambic pentameter and three-act structure tend to make Ida more difficult to stage effectively than some of the other Savoy Operas. In addition, modern audiences sometimes find the libretto's dated portrayal of sex roles, and the awkward resolution of the opera, unsatisfying. It is also curious, after the string of successes that the partnership had experienced with George Grossmith, Richard Temple, and Rutland Barrington in starring roles, to choose a theme that relegated them to comparatively minor roles.
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