Utopia Limited is a fine piece of radical art
Sunday 07 October 2012
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EmailPaul Simon (M Star October 2) didn't mention Gilbert and Sullivan's Utopia Limited in his celebration of the radical tradition in the so-called bourgeois arts.
This little known operetta, produced at the end of their collaboration, is a no-holds-barred attack on the basic tenets of capitalism by a librettist who clearly did very well out of it.
In the operetta, the idyllic island of Utopia is turned into a Limited Company "as in England," and the second act illustrates the chaos that ensues by adopting capitalist ideas.
It's not surprising Utopia Limited isn't performed very often. It's been my favourite Gilbert and Sullivan since I first saw a performance by an amateur company in Reading in the 1960s.
Tony Olsson
Ilfracombe
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