When Trial by Jury Became a Popular Comic Opera

Seeing this old libretto of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury immediately brought Yorgen Fenech’s trial in Malta to mind. First performed in 1875, Trial by Jury is a one-act comic opera in which a courtroom, its judge, jury, lawyers and litigants are transformed into a theatrical spectacle. Gilbert uses humour and exaggeration to satirise the legal process, human vanity and the behaviour of those involved in a highly public trial.

The comparison is obviously not one of substance: Fenech faces an exceptionally serious criminal case, whereas Gilbert and Sullivan were writing comedy. What struck me, rather, was the idea of the courtroom as a public stage. Major trials attract enormous attention, with every statement, intervention and procedural development scrutinised far beyond the courtroom itself. An old libretto entitled Trial by Jury therefore acquires an unexpected contemporary resonance in Malta, almost 150 years after the opera was first performed