The Pirates of Penzance
a concert version of the wonderful Victorian Gilbert & Sullivan Operetta
The wonderful singers and musicians of the Shoreline Chorus are back at Annesley, Markdale with a concert version of a tale of Victorian piracy and love, both delightful and complicated from the repertoire of Gilbert & Sullivan.
Shoreline is a 50 member soprano-alto-tenor-bass (SATB) Owen Sound based community choir under the direction of Ann-Marie MacDairmid. Ann-Marie started Shoreline simply out of a desire, “… to conduct her own choir and sing music that I wish I had had an opportunity to sing when I was to high school.”
Gen: But wait a bit. I object to pirates as sons-in-law.
King: We object to Major-Generals as fathers-in-law. But we waive that point. We do not press it. We look over it.
In The Pirates of Penzance, Frederic was as a child apprenticed to a band of tender-hearted, orphaned pirates by his nurse who, being hard of hearing, had mistaken her master’s instructions to apprentice the boy to a pilot. Frederic, upon completing his 21st year, rejoices that he has fulfilled his indentures and is now free to return to respectable society. But it turns out that he was born on February 29 in leap year, and he remains apprenticed to the pirates until his 21st birthday. By the end of the opera, the pirates, a Major General who knows nothing of military strategy, his large family of beautiful but unwed daughters, and the timid constabulary all contribute to a cacophony that can be silenced only by Queen Victoria’s name.
A rollicking band of pirates we,
Who, tired of tossing on the sea,
Are trying their hand at a burglaree,
With weapons grim and gory.Chorus of Pirates without, in the distance.
- 19 Jul 2026
- Expired!
- 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
- $ 35.00
- 82 Toronto St S, Markdale, ON N0C 1H0, Canada
