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List Five Things You Did Last Week: the Gilbert & Sullivan Edition [1]
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Date: 2025-02-25
During his first term, Glorious Leader Trump took a page from Shakespeare’s King Lear by asking each member seated at a cabinet meeting to introduce themselves by telling everybody how much they loved Trump. Gosh, that turned out so well. This time around, Trump’s Royal Vizir, Elon, is re-enacting a bit from Gilbert & Sullivan. Because although history does not always repeat, you can still make a snappy patter song out of it.
Ruddigore is not one of the better-known operettas that W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote. It was by no means a flop, but coming out as it did following their blockbuster hit, The Mikado, it was bound to be overshadowed. And it was kind of a weird play, full of ghosts, sinister doings and a witch’s curse. And then there was the title, which sounded to Victorian audiences like a naughty word. Still, it’s a favorite of mine, full of deliciously creepy music. And, as I mentioned, it’s weird.
The main character of the operetta is Robin Oakapple, a respectable gentleman farmer in a respectable village. Unbeknownst to his neighbors, he is actually Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd, one of the Bad Baronets of Ruddigore, who has fled his castle and his title hoping to avoid the hideous curse which lies upon his family. You see, each baronet of the Murgatroyd line is required to perform an act of wickedness every day, or else die in extreme melodramatic agony.
Robin’s dreadful secret is revealed and he is forced to resume his family title, and with it, the obligation to perform a daily crime. The ghosts of all his predecessors appear to him, stepping out of their portraits in the castle’s picture gallery, and led by the previous Murgatroyd, Sir Roderick; demanding that Robin produce a bullet-point list of all the dastardly deeds he has committed in the previous week, or else!
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