Surrey Art Gallery
13750 88 Avenue
Surrey, BC.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Time: 8 pm

Adult $24.50; Student/Senior $22.50

Twenty-five years before the setting of the opera, Iolanthe, a fairy, had committed the capital offence of marrying a mortal. The Queen of the Fairies had commuted the sentence to lifelong exile, on condition that Iolanthe left her husband and never saw him again. Her son, Strephon, loves the shepherdess Phyllis, but her guardian, the Lord Chancellor, wants to keep her for himself. The fairies try to intervene on behalf of the young lovers, but the Lords and Phyllis think Strephon is unfaithful and Phyllis decides to marry another.

The fairies take revenge by sending Strephon to Parliament and by casting a spell to make all the peers pass any bills that Strephon chooses, including entry depending on intelligence rather than class. The peers are terrified, and appeal to the fairies not to carry this out, but they refuse, so all angrily spurn each other.

The Lords appeal to the fairies to return things to normal, but it is too late to stop Strephon, who has confessed to Phyllis that he is half-fairy. They decide to marry immediately. Meanwhile, the other fairies have fallen in love with the Lords and they too marry, change the fairy law and all live happily ever after.

A traditional and magical production presented by the Fraser Valley Gilbert & Sullivan Society.