Princess Ida Sullivan Festival. Princess Ida Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was their eighth operatic collaboration of fourteen. "Princess Ida" opened at the Savoy Theatre on 5 January 1884, for a run of 246 performances. The piece concerns a princess who founds a women's university and teaches that women are superior to men and should rule in their stead. The prince to whom she had been married in infancy sneaks into the university, together with two friends, with the aim of collecting his bride. They disguise
New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players the other founders were alumni of the Barnard Gilbert and Sullivan Society, a New York City college theatre group that presented the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan at Columbia University from 1948 to 1991. The nascent group's first performance was in Straus Park, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, on July 14, 1974 as part of a street fair. In the early years of the company, singers were drawn from Columbia University and from the semi-pro New York theatre community, including Vincent La Selva's opera workshop, and sang without compensation. Originally called "West Side Gilbert & Sullivan Players", the