About the work
Comic opera in two acts by Arthur Sullivan (music) and William Schwenck Gilbert (libretto), first performed on 14 March 1885 at the Savoy Theatre, London. The plot is transposed to the fictional Japanese town of Titipu, using London's contemporary craze for Japanese culture as a backdrop for satirising Victorian bureaucracy and class.
Plot
In Titipu, flirting is punishable by death; to avoid carrying out executions, the town appoints the tailor Ko-Ko as Lord High Executioner – with his own death sentence first on the list. The heir to the throne, Nanki-Poo, returns disguised as a wandering minstrel and offers himself for execution if he may first marry Ko-Ko's ward Yum-Yum. When the Mikado learns his son has apparently been executed, the town faces draconian punishment until the deception unravels.
Cultural significance
With 672 performances in its original run, The Mikado became Gilbert and Sullivan's biggest stage success; within a year some 150 other companies were performing it across England and the United States. In Japan its caricature of the emperor made it controversial for decades, and the work was banned there at times, not returning to Japanese stages until after 1945.