Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado, presented by Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Victoria, is coming to Berninneit in August.

There are still tickets available to the show on Sunday, August 10 at 2pm, although Saturday's performance has sold out.

An afternoon of song, wit and live music, The Mikado is an enduringly popular comic opera with memorable music, endearing characters and some of the wittiest lyrical comedy in the English language.

Featuring much loved songs such as "I've Got A Little List" (the better-known title of "As Someday it May Happen"), "A Wand'ring Minstrel I", "Three Little Maids

From School Are We", "The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring" and many more.

The Mikado is touring regional Victoria accompanied by Geoffrey Urquhart on piano.

Nanki-Poo loves Yum-Yum but she's betrothed to Ko-Ko, the new Lord High Executioner. When the Mikado (or emperor) orders a beheading, Nanki-Poo and

Ko-Ko try to come to an arrangement that doesn't involve anyone losing their head. However, the arrival in town of the spurned Katisha turns everything topsy-turvy. With melodious mischief and preposterous plots, the tangled web unravels; will the punishment fit the crime?

Gilbert's imagined Japan was enriched by a London exhibition featuring a Japanese village inhabited by 100 citizens and the European obsession with everything Japanese following its re-opening to the world. The distracting beauty of his Japanese setting allowed Gilbert to get away with poking fun at the staid social norms, absurd etiquette, and weighty bureaucracy of a colonising Victorian England.

The opera enjoyed immense popularity throughout Europe where 17 companies performed it 9000 times within two years of its premiere in 1885. And, in 2006, the Japanese Tokyo Theatre Company presented The Mikado as part of the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in England.

The Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Victoria Inc (GSSV) was founded in 1935 by JC Williamsons with the University of Melbourne, and is one of the three oldest continuously performing groups in Australia.

Its performing arm, Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Victoria, offers high-quality and modestly priced live theatre experiences, specialising in sparkling Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, classic Golden Era musicals and the rediscovery of charming musical and theatrical gems from the late 19th to early 20th century.

The Society is a registered charity, independent and self-funded.

Get your ticket now for Sunday, August 10 at 2pm.

Tickets available at Trybooking or from the venue box office: www.trybooking.com/DBWKD

All tickets: $55.

Seating is allocated. Wheelchair spaces and companion seating available. Bar and kiosk available.

Berninneit, 91-97 Thompson Avenue, Cowes.