Lyric Theatre: HMS Pinafore

Ralph Rackstraw, a common sailor, and Josephine Corcoran, his widowed captain's daughter, love each other.  Josephine has concealed her love because revealing it would ruin her father’s career due to the class differences involved.

Meanwhile, Captain Corcoran, to improve his societal standing, desires to marry her to Sir Joseph Porter, the First Lord of the Admiralty, a pompous bureaucrat who has never been to sea.

Into all this comes Little Buttercup, a seller of trinkets.  She carries a shameful dark secret that will affect all of the above characters.

HMS Pinafore premiered in 1878, following The Sorcerer.  Despite generally favorable reviews, it did not sell well until Sullivan started including selections from it in his outdoor band concerts.  Then it sold so well that the financial backers tried (unsuccessfully) to hijack the production for themselves, going so far as to attempt to steal the scenery during the intermission of a performance.  To this day HMS Pinafore remains one of the three most popular Gilbert & Sullivan operettas.