The “Beyond Light Opera: Orchestral and Choral Music of Sir Arthur Sullivan” Concert

November 4, 5, 2000

The “Beyond Light Opera: Orchestral and Choral Music of Sir Arthur Sullivan” Concert Program

Steven Michael Utzig served as The Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company’s Music Director from 1998 through 2002.  In 2000, he proposed that the company present a concert of some of the orchestral and choral works of Sir Arthur Sullivan.  Mr. Utzig felt that doing so would provide the company’s audience with the opportunity to hear some of Sullivan’s most important non-operatic works, as well as to be an opportunity for the company’s excellent orchestra to come out from “behind the wings” to take center stage. 

Mr. Utzig proposed a two part concert.  The first half would be dedicated entirely to the orchestra.  They would present Sullivan’s overture to The Yeomen of the Guard and his Symphony in E, or “Irish” Symphony.  In the second half, the company’s singers would join the orchestra on stage, behind and on risers, to sing selections from Ruddigore and Sullivan’s Te Deum Laudamus.

The concert was performed as planned, on the Howard Conn Fine Arts Center stage, on the evenings of Saturday, November 4th and Sunday, November 5th, to very appreciative audiences.