Gilbert and Sullivan's first success, Trial by Jury, is paired with their rarely staged curiosity The Zoo to close English National Opera's London season.
English National Opera pairs Trial by Jury, Gilbert and Sullivan’s first success, with The Zoo at the London Coliseum in Covent Garden from Thursday 4 to Friday 12 March 2027.
Trial by Jury opened at the Royalty Theatre in March 1875 as an afterpiece to Offenbach, and it ran longer than the piece it supported. It lasts under 40 minutes and has no spoken dialogue.
Its target is the English legal system. A breach-of-promise suit comes to court, and the judge admits he got his position by marrying a wealthy woman.
The Zoo came a few months later, with a libretto by B. C. Rowe in place of Gilbert. Almost nobody stages it, which is the argument for putting the two on one bill. Sullivan wanted to be taken seriously as a symphonist and resented the comic operas for most of his life.
The double bill closes the company’s London season, which opened the previous October with Angel’s Bone, a Pulitzer-winning opera about trafficking.
The Coliseum was built for the same audience these pieces were written for.