Ruddigore

"Ruddigore, or The Witch's Curse" was the 10th collaboration between Gilbert and Sullivan. The operetta is a parody of the stock melodrama as the Baronets of Ruddigore are cursed. Anyone who succeeds to the title has to commit a crime every day or perish in inconceivable agony. But as one critic noted, Gilbert turns the moral absolutes of melodrama upside down: Good becomes bad, bad becomes good, and heroes take the easy way out.