How To Tell If You Are In A Gilbert & Sullivan Operetta

by Philip Goldfarb · April 9, 2015

Sorc-Pin-TrialPreviously in this series.

Your fate was determined by a nursemaid with an unaccountably grand flair for the dramatic.

Your ancestors are all somewhat more alive than usual.

The love of your life is either your childhood sweetheart whom you have never forgotten, or a man you met fifteen seconds ago.

Everything in your life hinges on a legal trick.

You are frequently and hilariously confused by homophones.

You sing, but only when other people are singing, and not in complete sentences.

You don’t actually sing, you just string words together really quickly with rhyme and hope no one notices.

You are a poet, but something in the back of your mind strongly suggests that you used to be a curate.

Introducing yourself to new people requires either a show-stopping coloratura solo or three choruses, whichever comes first.

You are not married. This makes you unhappy.

You are about to be married. This makes you unhappy.

You are a woman over twenty-five, and therefore hideous, unmarriageable, and an alto.

You and your twenty or so best friends all want to marry the same man. This causes you no problems whatsoever, and actually bonds you more closely than before.

You have a pretty taste for paradox.

You speak English, but will lapse into Italian in order to create rhymes at the drop of a hat.

Every situation in your life is but a poorly developed metaphor for some tick of nineteenth-century English society.

You live in a country other than England, but the only way to tell this is from your dress and your occasional use of another language, as you are otherwise entirely indistinguishable from an English person.

You are an orphan.

You are not an orphan, but have just said that you are to a man who is altogether too interested in this fact.

You think you are an orphan, and are rather surprised to discover that you have either very rich or very disreputable relations.

Your mother is younger than you, or at least appears to be so?

Every time you sing a song with someone else, you are beset with the nagging feeling that their verses have a hidden meaning you can’t quite put your finger on.

You allow your daughter to become educated, and this causes great trouble for everybody.

You and your coworkers can explain your jobs to anyone who asks in eloquent counterharmonies — and frequently do.

Your society’s legal system is fundamentally corrupt and everyone knows it, but no one has a problem with it.

Everyone around you knows your greatest secrets well enough to sing appropriate choruses as you reveal them.

You explain metaphors at great length, yet your listeners still do not quite grasp them.

Nobody you know ever dies, although really someone ought to have.

Exactly one person dies, and everyone is much happier because of it, even if they really shouldn’t be.

Everybody you know is married eventually, although possibly not to the people they intended to marry.

All your hopes, dreams, and dearest ambitions are ruined by excessive heterosexuality.

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125 Comments

  2. jadoogan +97

    I am unreasonably upset that one of these is not…

    You are the very model of a modern Major-General.

  4. jennycieplak +39

    You were switched at birth with someone of far different social situation.

  5. jennycieplak +46

    OK I had to get that one in there but I also have to say that THIS IS THE BEST THING THE TOAST HAS EVER DONE FOR ME PERSONALLY, as I spent most of my law school career doing Gilbert and Sullivan shows. Yet I am somehow gainfully employed!

  6. Blanche de Shambles +34

    You use your exalted rank in a military or governmental profession as cover for your cowardice, venality, or general incompetence.

  7. sokkysinging +63

    “…and an alto”. *dies* As a survivor (and enjoyer) of several G&S shows, I love this.

    1. sokkysinging +7

      Also, Philip, although Gondoliers is my favourite, I kind of want to hear your version!

  9. zolora +20

    I have never watched a single Gilbert & Sullivan production. I should get on that, yes?

    2. typewriterandgramophone +7

      It’s all about “Topsy-Turvy”. I might suggest avoiding the ubiquitous Brent Carver video series, which….aren’t all that great.

      Also, if you want some good G & S-related scholarship, Carolyn Williams’ “Gilbert and Sullivan: Gender, Genre, Parody” gives a wonderful grounding in the cultural forces swirling around Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte. I also quite like Gayden Wren’s “A Most Ingenious Paradox”.

      (There may be a reason that my userpic is of Marjorie Eyre as Iolanthe.)

    3. dancingcrowdesigns +4

      It may or may not be an acquired taste? My parents gave it to me, I managed to infect my husband, and between us we passed it on to our kids. But for some people it is merely painfully stupid. Finding the pirates of Penzance movie is a good plan, but if you can possibly see any one of them in person I recommend that the hardest.

  10. friendofdaja +42

    Although excessive heterosexuality has ruined your life, you do enjoy a spot of cross-dressing once in a while (or whenever the opportunity to enter a school for young ladies arises)

  11. BobbieWickham +65

    You have created an intellectual misandrist utopia. It is infiltrated by three men disguised as women. You end up marrying them. Somehow nobody realizes that this is a tragedy??

  12. writingortyping +109

    You are a pirate inexplicably possessed of a profound respect for contract law.

    1. Mrs_Peel +11

      I also love her one-woman version of Wagner’s Ring cycle (“I’m not making this up, you know!”)

      1. dancingcrowdesigns +9

        I was just going to say that! (we quote that a lot in our house)

        Also SHE’s his aunt.
        This is the first woman he’s met who is NOT his aunt.

  15. Eris +25

    You own exactly one billowing shirt, but wear it every day because it just looks so *good* on you.

  16. mbculver +28

    That I missed her depressed her young sister named Esther
    This mister to pester she tried.
    Now a pestering sister’s a festering blister
    You’re best to resist her say I…

    (Full of sounds, and words, and signifying…NOTHING.)

    1. katerii +16

      But I love she, and she loves me
      And raptured are the both of we
      Yes I love she, and she loves I
      And so to all eternityyyyyyyyyyyy!

    2. Mrs_Peel +14

      When she said I could have her
      Her sister’s cadaver
      Must surely have turned in its crypt…

      1. mbculver +12

        Yes yes yes YEEEEESSSSSS!!!

        I knew I could count on Toasties to get the reference and complete it. Big heartsies!

  18. typewriterandgramophone +19

    It never occurred to you to wonder why your mysteriously vanished seventeen-year-old wife had wings.

  19. Josh +25

    “You don’t actually sing, you just string words together really quickly with rhyme and hope no one notices.”

    And sometimes you are asked to do the whole thing again, while either adding an extra set of lyrics to it, or at a much faster tempo, whether the audience wants it or not. (Which they really do.)

  20. blunderbusst +45

    “You are a woman over twenty-five, and therefore hideous, unmarriageable, and an alto.”

    I have long suspected that my life was a Gilbert & Sullivan show. Thank you for confirming this.

  22. deleted182847 +26

    This is when I cross the frame like Chris Hemsworth on a scooter saying “somebody say Shirley Henderson?”

  23. dorkmuffin +26

    You can only speak in a tittering staccato at the same time as all of your sisters.

    1. dorkmuffin +13

      But you’re only a fairy from the waist down. Because the humor in this universe is VERY literal.

      1. Chuckie +2

        I imagine my Shepard doing a ‘ha-ha-ha-but-also-dying-a-little-inside’ laugh when Mordin says he’s not interested in cross-species relationships, and then feeling a strong mixture of longing and sadness and happiness when he says that if he *did* want to be with a human, he’d pick Shepard.

    1. typewriterandgramophone +8

      And the Fairy Queen had the right idea till she was Brung Low By Love.

  31. jifueko +59

    “You and your twenty or so best friends all want to marry the same man. This causes you no problems whatsoever, and actually bonds you more closely than before.”

    –> tumblr in a nutshell

  33. typewriterandgramophone +32

    The people in your life are: that little funny guy who bounces around, the big funny guy with the deeper voice, the slightly sinister guy with the even deeper voice, the narcissist with the high voice, the formidable woman with the deep voice, the funny woman with the mezzo, the impossibly high-minded one with the agile soprano, some men who adhere to a sweetly retro code of conduct, and a bunch of pretty young women who don’t say much but use perfect Received Pronunciation when they *do* speak.

  36. Lea +12

    Nothing is more hilarious than a good beheading. As long as it’s not happening to you.

  37. rolotomassi5 +11

    Everything I know about Gilbert & Sullivan I know from The West Wing, Slings & Arrows and the “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons.

      1. rolotomassi5 +8

        Yup, that’s the part, when Bart stalls by having him sing the entirety of the HMS Pinafore. Grammer is amazing.

    2. deleted182847 +6

      p.s. “chainsaw and hockey mask” p.p.s. Guilty as charged for having a lovely voice…much like Dewey Cox

  38. RoseCamelia +4

    I have seen G&S performances only from the orchestra pit. I have trouble separating the different operas in my memory. They all sound the same. It’s been a long time, but my memory is suggesting they’re all in the same key, as well. Anyone know?

    1. dancingcrowdesigns +5

      I am guessing yes? Also there are brilliant pastiches of Mozart in all of them.

      1. deleted182847 +4

        But do we all appreciate Simon Callow’s pastiches of Mozart in “Amadeus”?

        “Be my most tasty little dish!”

        And wasn’t Mr. Callow so good on Doctor Who?

        “A requiem mass?!”

    3. jennycieplak +3

      As a former pit musician myself I can tell you that they are all the same, except Gondoliers, which is better because it has the most awesomest violin parts.

    4. David +2

      Yes, RoseCamelia, you’re not far wrong. Arthur Sullivan is known not to write in minor keys in the operettas – maybe with the exception of Ruddigore when he needed to create a “dark” atmosphere, so I think that contributed to their apparent “saminess” However, by the time they got to The Gondoliers something happened and his writing suddenly turned virtuosic. In most cases he rarely strayed from keys further away from 3 sharps and 3 flats! But don’t hold that against him, listen to his other serious works and a whole new Sullivan world will open up putting him on the same platform of his other English contemporaries.

  39. Unreadaethel +12

    You are a woman over twenty-five, and therefore…an alto.

    That is a damnable lie, and I will fight you.

      1. Unreadaethel +5

        Oh, so do I, and I’m a mezzo soprano anyway. It just seemed like the thing to say.

  40. flammablespam +10

    I have never given out so many thumbs ups! Thumbs up for everyone I love you all!!

  42. deleted182847 +3

    I will re-state that the implantation of “The Mikado” into my brain started with “Foul Play” on early 80s cable TV.

    Good music is good music, regardless of the venue, but you should always beware of the dwarf.

  44. Unreadaethel +16

    I actually saw Pirates of Penzance at the Savoy in college, with Anthony Stewart Head as the pirate king. Only the orchestra was over-amplified, and the cast was under-amplified, so I heard NOTHING except the orchestra, which was playing oddly-arranged versions of everything. But I did get to watch ASH caper about the stage doing the Jack Sparrow impression that infected all performances of Pirates of Penzance after Pirates of the Caribbean came out, so that was cool.

  45. chartreusan +27

    I mean, not that I didn’t know this before, but THIS IS HOW I KNOW THE TOASTIES ARE MY PEOPLE.

    Also, I cannot get over how much I love that the “what never? well, hardly ever!” joke has happened twice in this comment section already.

    1. jennycieplak +7

      I seriously want to know how many of you guys I know in real life, because this sounds like a conversation I have been a part of numerous times.

      1. chartreusan +9

        I actually think there’s only one of my real life friends who shares my love of G&S. But a few weeks ago I did try to impress a guy at a bar by singing the first bit of “There is Beauty In the Bellow of the Blast.” I… can’t tell if it worked.

  46. Grace +8

    Your nightmares break the fourth wall.

    Trios with two baronets and a madwoman also break the fourth wall.

  47. SLH +5

    You have an inordinately large number of sisters and cousins and aunts, all of whom follow you around wherever you go, sing in homophonic four part harmony, and announce their relationship to you constantly.

  48. StoryMing +1

    You find you have unexpectedly and unaccountably contracted a profound admiration for the WRONG person! (-and, as there is no slightly shady but contrite magician to yield himself up and set things to rights, you have to improvise).

  49. autumnlorayne +9

    My undergrad experience began with a required freshman seminar on any topic the professor wanted, and mine was all about, you guessed it, Gilbert & Sullivan Operettas. One of our assignments involved re-writing a song with new lyrics. My daring composition deplored the state of cafeteria food (I would write a ballad/ For a fresh green salad/ Hey Willow Waly O!)

  51. Joyous_ness +3

    For any interested Bay Area Toast friends the Lamplighters theater group does a fair amount of G&S and next year (March) they are doing a Pirates of Penzance sing-a-long!

  52. susanintoronto +5

    You find yourself putting a modern day spin on 140-year-old political and social satire, and find that nothing has really changed

  53. Linda Marie Bell +4

    The Savoy Company, a Philadelphia non-profit organization in its 115th year of producing the sole works of Gilbert and Sullivan, will perform PATIENCE, OR BUNTHORNE’S BRIDE. The operetta or musical comedy will be costumed and fully-staged with a professional orchestra at Longwood Gardens, Kennett Square, PA in the Open Air Theatre on Friday, June 12th and Saturday, June 13th at 8:30 pm (raindates: June 14th & 15th). Performances of PATIENCE in 2015 will benefit CAPA (the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts). Go to http://www.savoy.org or FB for more details!

  55. Linda Marie Bell +4

    Of course I sing choruses…in public with The Savoy Company. You sing choruses…in public, too. You must be quite mad.

  56. David +2

    How about, you always lead your regiment from behind, or when the going gets tough you simply register a limited company?
    I’ll get my coat now…..

  61. Michael Moulds +3

    I achieved my life’s ambition to sing in a G&S operetta when I sang the role of Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B. at Western State College of Colorado at Gunnison in 1974. Oh joy and rapture unforeseen!

  63. fenixdawn +4

    I am very belatedly adding to this post because I did not have an account when this article first came out (that obviously should have been the moment I created one). I just want to say that my sisters and I grew up watching Pirates of Penzance to such an extent that we were shocked to discover that singing pirates were not a part of every American’s formative years.

  65. priskill

    You actually practiced baby farming. This is not okay and you are forever tainted.

    You are an ebullient and utter unrepentant social snob. This is perfectly okay, in fact, expected and sung about in 8 part harmony and fancy dress.