The Pittsburgh Savoyards are a

theater company Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicat ...

based in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

. Founded in

1938 Events January * January 1 – state-owned enterprise, State-owned railway networks are created by merger, in France (SNCF) and the Netherlands (Nederlandse Spoorwegen – NS). * January 20 – King Farouk of Egypt marries Saf ...

(one year before

Pittsburgh Opera Pittsburgh Opera is an American opera company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh Opera gives performances in several venues, primarily at the Benedum Center, with other performances at the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts Sch ...

), they are currently the oldest theater company in the Pittsburgh area, performing a repertoire of mainly

Gilbert and Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) and to the works they jointly created. The two men collaborated on fourteen com ...

operetta Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs and including dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, and length of the work. Apart from its shorter length, the oper ...

s. The current headquarters of the company is located in the nearby borough of Bellevue, Pennsylvania.

History

The Pittsburgh Savoyards were founded in 1938 and gave their first performance, ''

The Pirates of Penzance ''The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty'' is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, W. S. Gilbert. Its official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 3 ...

'', on

May 9 Events Pre-1600 * 328 – Athanasius is elected Patriarch of Alexandria. * 1009 – Lombard Revolt: Lombard forces led by Melus revolt in Bari against the Byzantine Catepanate of Italy. * 1386 – England and Portugal formall ...

1939 This year also marks the start of the World War II, Second World War, the largest and deadliest conflict in human history. Events Events related to World War II have a "WWII" prefix. January * January 1 ** Coming into effect in Nazi Ger ...

at the Twentieth Century Club in the

Oakland Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...

neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The company has had a few notable alumni in its history, including actor

Burt Mustin Burton Hill Mustin (February 8, 1884 – January 28, 1977) was an American character actorObituary '' Variety'', February 2, 1977, page 94. who appeared in over 150 film and television productions. He also worked in radio and appeared on the st ...

and opera singer

Mimi Lerner Mimi Lerner (May 20, 1945 – March 29, 2007) was a Polish-American mezzo-soprano, and later head of the voice department at Carnegie Mellon University. Life and career Lerner was born Emilia Lipczer in 1945 in Sambir, Ukraine to Jewish parents. ...

References

Theatre companies in Pittsburgh 1938 establishments in Pennsylvania {{musical-theat-stub