The Gondoliers
About the Show
As the opera begins, the audience is treated to the longest choral opening of any of the Savoy operas, with Venetian gondoliers and maidens setting the scene and playfully inviting us into their colorful world. Shortly, the young bride of the heir to the throne of the kingdom of Barataria arrives in Venice to join her husband. But he cannot be identified, since he was entrusted to the care of a drunken gondolier who mixed up the prince with his own son. As the King of Barataria has just been killed, these two young gondoliers must now jointly rule the kingdom until the nurse of the prince can be brought in to determine which of them is the rightful king. And that is only the beginning of the delightful complexity of the plot.
