"Peter McGillivray was at his scene-stealing best as Bottom"
Vancouver Opera closed the season with HMS Pinafore, or the Lass that Loved a Sailor. One of Gilbert and Sullivan’s most popular operas, Pinafore mocks Victorian memes - forbidden love and secret pining, class distinction and proper behaviour – and piles on Gilbertian ridicule of political incompetence and Sullivan’s musical parodies.
A feel-good operetta has fun while trying to show the world has changed since women wore pinafores
“The opera is centred on the role of Cenerentola (Cinderella) and Simone McIntosh radiated the pure inner beauty of her character without a trace of self-righteousness or superiority. Even if rapidly rattling off the text’s relentlessly repeated fricative sibilants—a device Rossini uses almost to excess—was not her forte, that particular type of vocal virtuosity is not germane to her character. Her opulent, floating mezzo-soprano was perfectly suited to the role’s more quietly loving and sincere passages in the midst of the fractious, comedic ado transpiring all about her.”