Opera Scotland

H M S Pinafore 1956D'Oyly Carte Opera Company

Read more about the opera H M S Pinafore

The D'Oyly Carte's 1956 Scottish tour consisted of five weeks, starting in Glasgow for a fortnight from 1 October. It continued with three weeks at the Edinburgh King's from Monday, 15 October. The tour repertoire consisted of Cox and Box, Trial By Jury, H M S Pinafore,  The Pirates of Penzance, Patience, Iolanthe, The Mikado, Ruddigore, The Yeomen of the Guard and The Gondoliers.

On this tour, H M S Pinafore was played with Cox and Box as a curtain-raiser. Sometimes the shorter piece chosen to precede Pinafore was Trial By Jury, while the non-Gilbert farce would be attached to another slightly short early G & S - The Pirates of Penzance. In any event, it seems only these two of all the vast catalogue of such brief pieces produced in Victorian times survived into the twentieth century.

Cast details for the performances of Cox and Box and H M S Pinafore are from a programme for Thursday 25th and Friday 26th October in the OperaScotland collection.