Location

Waiheke Musical Museum
2 Korora Road
Waiheke Island, 1081
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About this event

LABOUR WEEKEND 

Oh, Joy Unbounded!

GILBERT & SULLIVAN in AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND

Sunday 27 October 2024 at 5pm

Dr Kirstine Moffat & Waiheke Choral Society 

A fun evening to hear about Gilbert and Sullivan's impact in Australia and New Zealand, enjoy live performances by Waiheke Choral Society, and sing along to classic tunes. FREE event - please book online to ensure your seat, donations welcome!

Between 1871 and 1896 WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan composed and staged fourteen comic operas at the Savoy Theatre in London, celebrating a string of box-office breaking successes, parodying many Victorian institutions and ideologies, introducing several witticisms into the English language, and reshaping light opera into the formula of the stage musical. Today, Kirstine shares her current research on the history of the production, reception, and cultural significance of Gilbert and Sullivan in Australia and New Zealand. She will explore the almost fevered enthusiasm for Gilbert and Sullivan in the 1870s and early 1880s, with enterprising travelling players and commercially savvy impresarios rushing to capitalise on the outpouring of enthusiasm for the operas in Britain and America.

This immediate popularity has persisted, and Kirstine will also discuss the rise of Gilbert and Sullivan Societies, the prevelance of Gilbert and Sullivan in schools, and the many local adaptations and innovations. Her talk will be interspersed with some familiar tunes from the operas sung by Waiheke Choral Society and she will also play a couple of numbers on the piano in the hope that the audience may be in a singing mood!

Kirstine's research is ongoing, so if you have Gilbert and Sullivan stories and memories to share please let her know as she is keen to interview you and draw on your expertise.

Dr Kirstine Moffat is Associate Professor in the English Programme at the University of Waikato. She has published widely on nineteenth-century New Zealand literature, music, and culture and is the author of Piano Forte: Stories and Soundscapes from Colonial New Zealand. Her earliest memory is her father singing to her from Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore and she is a lifelong reader and teacher of Jane Austen’s fiction. Kirstine is passionate about teaching as well as research and was the proud recipient of a 2020 Ako Aotearoa National Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award.


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