Pirates of Penzance - Critique The Pirates of Penzance was an opera performed by the Southwest Texas Opera Workshop. The Pirates of Penzance, composed by Gilbert & Sullivan, is a light-hearted parody of the traditional opera. This opera takes place somewhere in the British Virgin Islands. It is about a boy, Federic, who is to be apprenticed by his nurse, Ruth, to become a pilot. Ruth mistakes the word pilot for pirate and apprentices him to a band of pirates. She, too, remains with them as a maid-of-all-work. Act I opens with the celebration of Frederic’s coming of age. He is planning to leave the pirates and devote his life to the era