Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, a satire of late 19th century British institutions, is about to get the OperaSLO grand production treatment, and it promises to be spectacular.
The operetta is set in the fictional Japanese town of Titipu, where flirting is punishable by death, executions are social events, and government bureaucrats are absolutely full of themselves. B.S. British politics, social climbing, and legal double-speak are skewered with glee.
Witness the spectacle
OperaSLO—under the baton of Maestro Brian Asher Alhadeff and in conjunction with Central Coast Gilbert & Sullivan, Cuesta Concord Chorus, Civic Ballet San Luis Obispo, and DeyoDances—presents The Mikado at the Performing Arts Center in San Luis Obispo on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 17 and 18 (2 p.m.; 5 and older; $34 to $92 at pacslo.org).
This marks the “Central Coast’s first grand-scale production of the beloved operetta made famous to modern audiences in the 1999 Academy Award-winning film Topsy-Turvy,” OperaSLO announced.
Nanki-Poo, the emperor of Japan’s son, comes to Titipu disguised and in search of his love, Yum-Yum, only to discover that she’s engaged to Ko-Ko, who was found guilty of flirting and condemned to death but then was made the Lord High Executioner. Because Ko-Ko must execute himself before executing anyone else, executions have all but stopped, much to the anger of some officials. It only gets more absurd from there.
Memorable songs such as “The Sun Whose Rays,” “Behold the Lord High Executioner!” “I’ve Got a Little List,” and “Three Little Maids from School are We” make the opera one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s finest.
It’s also worth noting that some have argued the opera is racist and guilty of cultural appropriation.
“I think The Mikado is sometimes misunderstood because people focus first on where the story is set rather than on what Gilbert was actually satirizing,” OperaSLO General and Artistic Director Brian Asher Alhadeff explained. “Beneath that setting is a wonderfully sharp satire of bureaucracy, ridiculous laws, abuses of power, people holding positions they probably shouldn’t hold, and people in authority taking themselves far too seriously.
“That’s what makes the work feel so relevant 140 years later,” he continued. “The times change. The setting changes. The people in power change. But human nature—and the absurdity of bureaucracy—doesn’t change very much. That’s one of the reasons we wanted to produce The Mikado now. Its comedy gives us an opportunity to laugh at those absurdities without telling an audience what to think politically. People with very different points of view can sit in the same theater, recognize some of the same human behavior, and laugh together.”
Alhadeff and OperaSLO are avoiding what he called some of the “horrible stereotypes that unfortunately a couple of opera companies did in the ’80s and ’90s and gave it a bad reputation. We’re not taping white people’s eyes back to look Asian. We’re not putting buck teeth in folks’ jaws. We’re not giving them black circular glasses or painting people’s faces white. Nothing like that. It’s really a celebration of Asian culture that inspired the writing of the show. Just the beautiful colors and artistry of the Orient. But ultimately, it’s a comedic backdrop to a political satire of British culture.”
You may have seen other productions of The Mikado done locally. Central Coast Gilbert & Sullivan, whose artistic director, Marcy Irving, is serving as stage director of this production, has mounted it twice. The New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players brought its production to Cal Poly several years ago. But according to Alhadeff, it’s been about six years since the last local performance.
“First of all, Gilbert and Sullivan is almost always performed by—there’s got to be a nicer way to couch it than saying an amateur group. It’s just rarely a subject that’s taken on by a professional company,” Alhadeff explained. “The forces that they would throw at it would be pre-recorded music or maybe a small band, very limited sets, cast members playing four or five roles. But the way OperaSLO is producing is we’re throwing the forces of a grand opera company. We’re going to have wicked-huge two-story sets, an internationally acclaimed cast of opera singers, a massive 45-piece orchestra—I don’t even think Sullivan experienced [it] in his lifetime that size.
“We’re going to be producing it in a beautiful opera house. We have tremendous costumes that are coming from all over the world, essentially, but a lot of which are also being collected here and being created for beautifully vivid costumes.”
In other words, Alhadeff said this will be “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” It will also include a cast of kids who attended OperaSLO’s summer opera camp, where the kids mounted an abbreviated performance of The Mikado at the end of the camp.
“They did a beautiful job,” Alhadeff said. “I have never seen a larger audience for our children’s summer opera camp than the one that came to this Mikado. It was amazing. We want [the children] to experience the music. We want to thrust them into performance, and then we want to show them that the work that they’re doing, that they’ve been thrust into, is relevant to the audience that will come and watch them. That’s why we give them an opera camp where they make their own shows. And while they’re involved in this, they’re also preparing for the adult professional production that’s going to follow.”
As usual, OperaSLO’s productions are collaborative with other arts organization, including Cuesta Concord Chorus, Civic Ballet San Luis Obispo, and DeyoDances.
“This is not simply a production—it’s an experience,” OperaSLO announced. “You haven’t truly experienced live theater until you’ve seen it produced at this scale. The Mikado will thrill, delight, and surprise audiences from the first note to the final curtain.” ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 8-15, 2026.
