Sweet Briar College will present the comic opera "The Pirates of Penzance" at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 1 and Saturday, May 2 in Murchison Lane Auditorium at Babcock Fine Arts Center. Admission is free.

Marcia Thom will direct a cast made up of many first-time performers — and therein lies much of the fun, along with Gilbert and Sullivan's hilarious tale of tender-hearted pirates, Thom says.

The players include about 25 Sweet Briar women taking her Opera Workshop course for credit, plus five Randolph College students, Amherst County High student Michelle Carwile, Holy Cross senior Mary King, and two youngsters, Catherine McCord and Yelena Billias who are both the daughters of Sweet Briar faculty musicians. Yelena's mother, Anna Billias, will provide piano accompaniment.

Thom, a music instructor and soprano with numerous opera credits, introduced the workshop at Sweet Briar three years ago. She likes Gilbert and Sullivan because their works are funny, in English, and easy to learn and perform.

"It is also somewhat of a gift to the community as Gilbert and Sullivan is not often performed in this area," she said.

The production is the finale of the semester-long workshop designed for ... well, anybody. Apart from exploring operatic literature and character analysis, Thom believes its chief product is self-confidence.

"As far as I am concerned, the point of the class is teaching the ladies that they can have fun, sing, be on stage and overcome their inhibitions at the same time," she said. "Some of these gals will never be on stage again — but they will walk into board rooms in their chosen professions and be able to stand in front of an 'audience' without fear."

Thom is exuberant as she describes an evolution. "I love how afraid they are the first few rehearsals and then by production time they are adding things to their characters and forgetting to be afraid! At the beginning of the semester very few of them think the class will truly culminate in a performance they can be proud of. Afterwards they all believe it."

"The Pirates of Penzance" has been popular since its premiere in 1879. In composer Arthur Sullivan's own words, the music is "strikingly tuneful and catching." Meanwhile, W.S. Gilbert's witty libretto offers audiences such timeless ironies as The General. The handsomely uniformed officer professes to know nothing of tactics, a condition he says makes him the "very model of modern major-general."

The story revolves around the General, his gaggle of daughters, and Frederic and the pirates to whom he is mistakenly apprenticed — and who, it is revealed, are "no members of the common throng." To say more could spoil the fun.

For additional information, e-mail mthom@sbc.edu or call (434) 381-6221.