1879
Gilbert and Sullivan‘s fifth collaboration, the comic opera The Pirates of Penzance, premieres at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in NYC.
The superlative comic opera, full of witty prickles & catching tunage, is loosed on the Victorian world it sends up. By opening it in America, the boys clinch a considerably superior remunerance … compared to Pinafore, which had been widely pirated in the US.
Thou gildest e’en the pirate’s trade:
Hail, flowing fount of sentiment!
All hail, Divine Emollient!
Modernized productions include a musical version which opens on Broadway Jan. 10, 1981 for 787 performances (& a Tony Award), its film version, 
The Pirates of Penzance (Feb. 18, 1983) (*), and Australia’s The Pirate Movie (Aug. 6, 1982)(*), ‘a clever romp in its own right.’ (Kristy MicNichol, Christopher Atkins)
The 1968 recording by the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company is highly regarded.
▷@ GaS discography ▹ ▷GaS archive ▹
1929 D’Oyly Carte recording
1969
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First performance of the Cockettes at the Palace Theatre (*) (*) (*) in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood.
The group is the subject of a 2002 documentary film.
A disagreement in 1971 spawns The Angels of Light, ‘a “family” of dedicated artists who sang, danced, painted and sewed for the Free Theater’. (*)
The Angels in turn spawn experimental, punk never-disbanded Tuxedomoon in 1977. Their 1979 single No Tears ‘remains a post-punk cult classic’. 
Their first album Half-Mute appears in 1980 on Residents label Ralph Records. (*) In 2004 they resume recording, creating Cabin in the Sky (released on the Crammed label); a 2014 album is titled Pink Narcissus.
