New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players

New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players (often known as NYGASP) is a professional repertory theatre company, based in New York City that has specialized in the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan for over 40 years. It performs an annual season in New York City and tours extensively in North America.

Beginning in New York City in 1974 by performing the Savoy operas with piano accompaniment, the company hired its first orchestra in 1979 for its seasons at Symphony Space theatre in New York. The company was fully professional by the 1980s and began touring, presenting its full-scale productions at such venues as Wolf Trap in Virginia, as well as its New York seasons. In 2002, NYGASP first rented the 2,750-seat New York City Center, where it performed most of its annual New York seasons until 2013. It has also performed at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival several times. NYGASP also performs at schools and offers smaller touring groups and cabaret performances.

Albert Bergeret founded the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players in 1974, together with his wife, Gail Wofford (they married in 1978) and a few others. Bergeret, Wofford and most of the other founders were alumni of the Barnard Gilbert and Sullivan Society, a New York City college theatre group that presented the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan at Columbia University from 1948 to 1991.

The nascent group's first performance was in Straus Park, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, on July 14, 1974 as part of a street fair. In the early years of the company, singers were drawn from Columbia University and from the semi-pro New York theatre community, including Vincent La Selva's opera workshop, and sang without compensation. Originally called "West Side Gilbert & Sullivan Players", the group originally performed scenes from Gilbert and Sullivan operas with a sound system and a cast of nine people in outdoor performances and in nursing homes and hospitals around New York City, with borrowed costumes, set pieces and an electric piano from the New York Grand Opera, the Bloomingdale School of Music and other supporters. Their first indoor home was at the theatre in the B’nai Jeshurun Community Center. Bergeret designed and built the sets and acted as stage and musical director. In 1975, the company incorporated as a not-for-profit organization under the current name.

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