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
Gilbert and Sullivan to commission another full-length opera from the team. Gilbert and Sullivan scored their first international hit with "H.M.S. Pinafore" (1878), satirising the rise of unqualified people to positions of authority and poking good-natured fun at the Royal Navy and the English obsession with social status (building on a theme introduced in "The Sorcerer", love between members of different social classes). As with many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, a surprise twist changes everything dramatically near the end of the story. Gilbert oversaw the designs of sets and costumes, and he directed the performers on stage. He sought realism in