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Gilbert and Sullivan's eighth collaboration, Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant, opened on 5 January 1884 at the Savoy Theatre and ran for 246 performances. To create the libretto, Gilbert turned to a play he had written in 1870 entitled The Princess, and reused much of that play's dialogue and retained its three act structure but he wrote new lyrics for Sullivan to set. Sullivan provided some of the best music he ever wrote for the Savoy.
Both the play and the opera draw on characters and incidents in Tennyson's blank verse narrative poem, The Princess, which had been published in 1847.
Prince Hilarion has been married in babyhood to Princess Ida, daughter of King Gama. The Princess, however, has set up a college for women from which all men are barred. Hilarion and his friends infiltrate the castle and ultimately the men, led by Hilarion's father, King Hildebrand, stage a full-scale invasion. Ida is abandoned by her women and finally surrenders to her Prince.
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 Design for Princess Ida's costume by Percy Anderson, 1921 |
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- First Night Cast
- First Night Review from The Times, 7 January 1884
- Programmes from the original production:
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- A chapter on Princess Ida from the book "Gilbert and Sullivan Opera, A History and a Comment", by H. M. Walbrook, published in London in 1922.
- Reviews, pictures and cast list of the 1954 D'Oyly Carte production staged at the Savoy theatre on 27 September 1954.
- Bab drawings illustrating Princess Ida. Scanned graphics files of Gilbert's own drawings
- Illustrated Music Covers
- Eight watercolors by W. Russell Flint.
The Prototypes: Tennyson's Poem and Gilbert's Play
- Tennyson's poem The Princess, which was the basis for Gilbert's 1870 play The Princess.
- Gilbert's 1870 play with music The Princess, from which Princess Ida was derived.
- From Tennyson to Gilbert. David Fidler has compared Tennyson's poem The Princess with Gilbert's Princess Ida and shown how Gilbert modified Tennyson's ideas and characters when making his operatic perversion of the Poet Laureate's original.
- Comparative edition of the Princess Ida and Princess prepared by Marc Shepherd[Zipped Word Document, 88KB] with the text of The Princess on the left side of the page, that of Princess Ida on the right. Where Gilbert deleted material in the transition from play to opera, the right side of the page is blank. Where Gilbert added material to the opera, the left side is blank. Where there is writing on both sides of the page, you can readily see how Gilbert modified (and, in most cases, improved upon) the dialogue from his earlier play.
- Transcript of a discussion of Princess Ida by members of the SavoyNet distribution list. This extensive discussion provides substantial background information on this opera, and is a must for anyone wanting to understand it better, produce it, or perform in it. Compiled by Sarah Mankowski.
Page modified 6 November 2019