Just to further elaborate on the copyright situation...
HMS PINAFORE had been such a smash hit in the UK that unauthorized productions started popping up in the US and, by the time that an officially sanctioned production arrived in the US, the show had already widely played in this country, which, of course, lessened the money that Gilbert and Sullivan were able to make on the show here.
To do an end run around this situation for their next production, THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE, Gilbert and Sullivan opened it first in the US to establish copyright here. To establish copyright in the UK and avoid the reverse situation, they had an HMS PINAFORE touring company do a single performance of PIRATES in whatever small UK town they were in at the time.
This was a great work-around to complicated copyright laws of the time. |
