(From Birmingham)
THE BIRMINGHAM STUDIO ORCHESTRA
Conducted by JOSEPH LEWIS
Pinafore was produced in 1878, and had a run of 700 consecutive nights in London. Besides that, it was produced in a pirated version at another theatre in London and had a tremendous vogue throughout the country. In the United States its unauthorised performances broke all records of that kind, and a contemporary report tells us that ' the spectacle was presented at every theatre and every concert of importance in the big cities, producing the same piece without the author and composer receiving a farthing for their work.' The matter became so serious that Gilbert and Sullivan together went to New York in 1879 to produce their own authentic version at the Fifth Avenue Theatre.
It is one of the few Gilbert and Sullivan Operas which the Germans attempted to adapt to their own stage, giving it the title Amor am Bord (Amor on Board). Its whimsical humour, poking fun at the old Admiralty methods, is not suited to the stolid German temperament; in those far-off days, at any rate, to poke fun at a Government department was simply 'not done ' in Germany, and Pinafore's delightful humour missed fire altogether.