PIRATES OF PENZANCE
      10 productions

THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE, or The Slave of Duty, was first produced at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York on 31 December, 1879, and, also, for copyright purposes one performance was given in England on the previous day at the Royal Bijou Theatre, Paignton. The first performance in London, however, was not until 3 April, 1880, when it was produced at the Opera Comique.

In The Pirates of Penzance, Frederic was as a child apprenticed to a band of tenderhearted, 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 daugters, and the timid constabulary all contribute to a cacophony that can be silenced only by Queen Victoria's name