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Keeping with its custom of producing rarely seen plays, the California Music Theatre has dusted off a Gilbert and Sullivan spoof on the British Parliament, as told through a love story between a fairy and a mortal.

“Iolanthe,” an 1890s comic operetta, is being staged at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium through July 29.

The nonprofit theater company specializes in putting on rare musicals with professional casts, said spokesman Mike Pippi. “We are dedicated to new shows and seldom-presented works. It’s a way of keeping theater alive and furthering the development of the musical,” he said.

“Iolanthe,” directed by Tom Blank, is set in fairyland and in the House of Lords in London and features Lu Leonard, as Queen of the Fairies and Noel Harrison as the Lord Chancellor.

Leonard is a character actress who recently starred as the prison matron in a Hollywood

production of “Women Behind Bars.”

Harrison, son of the late actor Rex Harrison, is best known for his role in the television series “The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.”

The California Music Theatre, a resident company of the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, stages four shows annually, Pippi said. Its next production, “Clothespins and Dreams,” will begin in August as the first world premiere staged by the company.

The theater group was founded four years ago by Gary Davis, a director who has worked for 15 years in Southern California theater and serves as artistic director for the company.

“Iolanthe” will be presented nightly, except Monday, at 8 p.m., with matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets, available through Ticketron, range in price from $16 to $32.50.