Portal:Opera/Selected picture/143
Credit: Robert Jacob Hamerton, restored by Adam Cuerden
The Contrabandista, or The Law of the Ladrones, is a two-act comic opera by Arthur Sullivan and F. C. Burnand. It premiered at St. George's Hall, London, on 18 December 1867 under the management of Thomas German Reed, for a run of 72 performances. There were brief revivals in Manchester in 1874 and America in 1880. In 1894, it was revised into a new opera, The Chieftain, with a completely different second act.
The piece was the first of Sullivan's full-length operas that was produced. Although it was not a great success, it exhibits many of the qualities and techniques that Sullivan would employ in composing his twenty further comic operas, including the famous series of fourteen Gilbert and Sullivan operas produced between 1871 and 1896.