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Princess IdaPrincess Ida, or Castle Adamant, is the eighth operetta written by Gilbert & Sullivan. It opened at the Savoy Theatre on January 5, 1884 and enjoyed a run of 246 performances. Princess Ida is based on Tennyson's The Princess. It is the only operetta that W.S. Gilbert wrote in blank verse, and it is the only Gilbert & Sullivan operetta composed of three acts. The operetta satirizes feminism and women's colleges, both of which were controversial topics in conservative Victorian England. Princess Ida is an interesting operetta with lovely music, particularly a sequence of songs in Act II known as "Sullivan's string of pearls". However, between the comments made by characters in the operetta and its simplistic resolution, it is clearly a backlash against feminism's earliest incarnation. But Gilbert also satirizes the foolishness of men, and audiences generally do not take the anti-feminism seriously. The Plot Princess Ida is a young woman who dismisses men entirely and forms a women's college where no man is ever to set foot. The operetta opens on the day that she is supposed to meet the man to whom she was betrothed in infancy. She ignores her duty, however, and remains at her college. Her prince, Hilarion, has never met her but is in love with her anyway. He and two of his friends invade Ida's college, laughing at the very concept: "A woman's college -- maddest folly going!" In the end, Ida is persuaded to wed her prince when Hilarion's father, King Hildebrand, presents her with the following argument in response to her appeal to the gratitude of Posterity: If you enlist all women in your cause, And make them all abjure tyrannic Man, The obvious question then arises, "How Is this Posterity to be provided?" She replies, I never thought of that!
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