Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO (13 May 1842 – 22 November 1900) was an English composer. He is best known for his internationally successful series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W.S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. Sullivan composed 23 operas, 13 major orchestral works, eight choral works and oratorios, two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous hymns and other church pieces, songs, parlour ballads, part songs, carols, and piano and chamber pieces.

Apart from his Savoy operas with Gilbert, Sullivan is best known for some of his hymns and parlour songs, including "Onward Christian Soldiers", "The Absent - Minded Beggar", and "The Lost Chord". His most critically praised pieces include his Irish Symphony, his Overture di Ballo, The Martyr of Antioch, The Golden Legend, his incidental music to The Tempest and, of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, The Yeomen of the Guard. Sullivan's only grand opera, Ivanhoe, was initially highly successful, but it has been little heard since his death.

Sullivan was born in Lambeth, London. His parents were Thomas Sullivan (1805 – 1866), a military bandmaster and music teacher born in Ireland and raised in Chelsea, London, and Mary Clementina (née Coghlan, 1811 – 1882), English born, of Irish and Italian descent. Thomas Sullivan was based from 1845 to 1857 at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where he was the bandmaster. Young Sullivan became proficient with all the instruments in the band by the age of eight. He later recalled:

I was intensely interested in all that the band did, and learned to play every wind instrument, with which I formed not merely a passing acquaintance, but a real, life - long, intimate friendship. I gradually learned the peculiarities of each … what it could do and what it was unable to do. I learned in the best possible way how to write for an orchestra.

Despite the boy's obvious musical talent, Thomas Sullivan knew the disappointments and insecurity of a musical career, and discouraged him from pursuing it. While studying at a private school in Bayswater, Sullivan, then aged 11, persuaded his parents and the headmaster, William Gordon Plees, to allow him to apply for membership in the choir of the Chapel Royal. Despite concerns that Sullivan at nearly 12 years of age was too old to give much service as a treble before his voice broke, he was accepted and soon became a soloist. Sullivan flourished under the training of the Reverend Thomas Helmore, master of the choristers, and began to compose anthems and songs. Helmore encouraged the young Sullivan's composing talent, and arranged for one of his pieces, "O Israel", to be published in 1855, Sullivan's first published work. Helmore also enlisted Sullivan's assistance in creating harmonisations for a volume of The Hymnal Noted.

In 1856, the Royal Academy of Music awarded the first Mendelssohn Scholarship to the 14 year old Sullivan, granting him a year's training at the academy. His principal teacher there was John Goss, whose own teacher, Thomas Attwood, had been a pupil of Mozart.

Sullivan's scholarship was extended to a second year, during which he studied with the head of the academy, William Sterndale Bennett. In 1858, in what the biographer Arthur Jacobs calls an "extraordinary gesture of confidence", the scholarship committee extended his grant for a third year so that he could study in Germany, at the Leipzig Conservatoire. While there, Sullivan studied composition with Julius Rietz, counterpoint with Moritz Hauptmann and Ernst Richter and the piano with Louis Plaidy and Ignaz Moscheles. He was trained in Mendelssohn's ideas and techniques but was also exposed to a variety of musical styles, including Schubert, Verdi, Bach, and Wagner. Visiting a synagogue, he was so struck by some of the cadences and progressions of the music that thirty years later he could recall them for use in his serious opera, Ivanhoe. Originally intended to spend a year in Leipzig, Sullivan stayed there for three years.

During his years in Germany, Sullivan became friendly with the composer Franz Liszt, the singer and later impresario Carl Rosa, and the violinist Joseph Joachim. For his last year at Leipzig, his father scraped together the money for living expenses, and the conservatoire assisted by waiving its fees. Sullivan credited his Leipzig period with tremendous musical growth. His graduation piece, completed in 1861, was a set of incidental music to Shakespeare's The Tempest. Revised and expanded, it was performed at the Crystal Palace in 1862, a year after his return to London, and was an immediate sensation. He began building a reputation as England's most promising young composer.

Sullivan embarked on his composing career with a series of ambitious works, interspersed with hymns, parlour songs and other light pieces in a more commercial vein. His compositions were not enough to support him financially, and from 1861 to 1872 he supplemented his income by working as a church organist, which he enjoyed, and as a music teacher, which he hated and gave up as soon as he could.

Sullivan's long association with works for the voice began with The Masque at Kenilworth (Birmingham Festival, 1864). During a spell as organist at Covent Garden, he composed his first ballet, L'Île Enchantée (1864), and had his first experience of opera, which was directed there by Michael Costa. In 1866, he premiered his Irish Symphony and Cello Concerto, his only works in each such genre. In the same year, his Overture in C (In Memoriam), commemorating the recent death of his father, was a commission from the Norwich Festival. During his lifetime, it was one of his most popular works for orchestra. In 1867, his overture Marmion was premiered by the Philharmonic Society. The Times called it "another step in advance on the part of the only composer of any remarkable promise that just at present we can boast."

In the autumn of 1867, Sullivan travelled with George Grove to Vienna, in search of neglected manuscript scores by Schubert'. They found and copied several, and were particularly excited about their final discovery, which Grove described thus: "I found, at the bottom of the cupboard, and in its farthest corner, a bundle of music - books two feet high, carefully tied round, and black with the undisturbed dust of nearly half - a - century. … These were the part - books of the whole of the music in Rosamunde, tied up after the second performance in December, 1823, and probably never disturbed since. Dr. Schneider [curator] must have been amused at our excitement; but let us hope that he recollected his own days of rapture; at any rate, he kindly overlooked it, and gave us permission to take away with us and copy what we wanted."

Sullivan's first attempt at opera, The Sapphire Necklace (1863 – 64) to a libretto by Henry F. Chorley, was not produced and is now lost, except for the overture and two songs from the work, which were separately published. His first surviving opera, Cox and Box (1866), was originally written for a private performance. It then received charity performances in London and Manchester, and was later produced at the Gallery of Illustration, where it ran for an extraordinary 264 performances. W.S. Gilbert, writing in Fun magazine, pronounced the score superior to F.C. Burnand's libretto. The first Sullivan - Burnand collaboration was sufficiently successful to spawn a two - act opera, The Contrabandista (1867; revised and expanded as The Chieftain in 1894), which did not do nearly as well. Sullivan's last major work of the 1860s was a short oratorio, The Prodigal Son, premiered in Worcester Cathedral as part of the 1869 Three Choirs Festival to much praise.

Sullivan's most successful orchestral work, the Overture di Ballo, was composed for the Birmingham Festival in 1870. In 1871, he published his only song cycle, The Window; or, The Songs of the Wrens (1871), to words by Tennyson. In the same year, he wrote the first of a series of suites of incidental music for West End theatre productions of Shakespeare plays. In the same year, Sullivan composed a dramatic cantata, On Shore and Sea, for the opening of the London International Exhibition. At the end of 1871, the impresario John Hollingshead commissioned Sullivan to work with W.S. Gilbert to create the burlesque style comic opera Thespis for the Gaiety Theatre. Conceived as a Christmas entertainment, it ran through to Easter 1872, a satisfying run for such a piece. After Thespis, Gilbert and Sullivan went their separate ways until they collaborated on three parlour ballads in late 1874 and early 1875.

Sullivan's large scale works of the early 1870s were the Festival Te Deum (Crystal Palace, 1872); and the oratorio, The Light of the World (Birmingham Festival, 1873). He provided suites of incidental music for a production of The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Gaiety in 1874 and Henry VIII at the Theatre Royal, Manchester in 1877. He continued to compose hymns throughout the decade, the most famous of which is "Onward, Christian Soldiers" (1872, words by Sabine Baring - Gould). In 1873, Sullivan contributed two songs to Burnand's Christmas "drawing room extravaganza", The Miller and His Man.

In 1875, the manager of the Royalty Theatre, Richard D'Oyly Carte, needed a short piece to fill out a bill with Offenbach's La Périchole. Remembering Thespis, Carte reunited Gilbert and Sullivan, and the result was the one - act comic opera Trial by Jury. Soon after the successful opening of Trial by Jury, Sullivan wrote The Zoo, another one - act comic opera, with a libretto by B.C. Stephenson. But the latter work had only a few short runs, and for the next 15 years, Sullivan's sole operatic collaborator was Gilbert; the two created an additional 12 operas together.

Sullivan also turned out more than 80 popular songs and parlour ballads, most of them written before the end of the 1870s. His first popular song was "Orpheus with his Lute" (1866), and a successful part song was "Oh! hush thee, my babie" (1867). The best known of his songs is "The Lost Chord" (1877, lyrics by Adelaide Anne Procter), written in sorrow at the death of his brother Frederic. The sheet music for his best received songs sold in large numbers, and were an important part of his income; many of them were adapted as dance pieces.

In this decade, Sullivan's conducting appointments included the Glasgow Choral Union concerts, 1875 – 77 and the Royal Aquarium, London, 1876. In addition to his appointment as Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, of which he was a Fellow, he was appointed as the first Principal of the National Training School for Music in 1876. He accepted the latter post reluctantly, fearing that discharging the duties thoroughly would leave too little time for composing. In this he was correct, as his successor Hubert Parry also discovered. Sullivan was not a success in the post, and resigned in 1881.

Sullivan's next collaboration with Gilbert, The Sorcerer (1877), ran for 178 performances, a success by the standards of the day, but H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), which followed it, turned Gilbert and Sullivan into an international phenomenon. It ran for 571 performances in London, and more than 100 unauthorised productions were quickly mounted in America alone. H.M.S. Pinafore was followed by The Pirates of Penzance in 1879, another international success that opened in New York and then ran in London for 363 performances.

In 1880, Sullivan was appointed director of the Leeds Festival. For his first festival he was commissioned to write a sacred choral work. He chose Henry Hart Milman's 1822 dramatic poem based on the life and death of Saint Margaret the Virgin for its basis. Gilbert adapted the libretto for Sullivan, abridging it, rearranging sections, reassigning lines, and making a few additions of his own. The Martyr of Antioch premiered in October 1880. Sullivan was an unshowy conductor, and some thought him dull, but his composition had an enthusiastic reception and was frequently revived. A grateful Sullivan presented his collaborator with an engraved silver cup inscribed "W.S. Gilbert from his friend Arthur Sullivan."

After the profitable run of The Pirates of Penzance, Carte presented the next Gilbert and Sullivan piece, Patience, at the Opera Comique beginning in April 1881. In October, Patience transferred to the new Savoy Theatre, built with the profits of the previous Gilbert and Sullivan works. The rest of their collaborations were produced there, as a result of which they are widely known as the "Savoy Operas". Iolanthe (1882) was the first of their works to premiere at the new theatre. On 22 May 1883, during the run of Iolanthe, Sullivan was knighted by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. Although it was the operas with Gilbert that had earned him the broadest fame, the honour was conferred for his services to serious music. The musical establishment, and many critics, believed that this should put an end to his career as a composer of comic opera – that a musical knight should not stoop below oratorio or grand opera. Sullivan too, despite the financial security of writing for the Savoy, increasingly viewed his work with Gilbert as unimportant, beneath his skills, and also repetitious. After Iolanthe, even before receiving news of the knighthood, Sullivan had not intended immediately to write a new work with Gilbert, but he suffered a serious financial loss when his broker went bankrupt in November 1882. Only two months before receiving news of the honour, Sullivan had signed a five year agreement with Gilbert and Carte, compelling him to produce a new comic opera on six months' notice. Having agreed to this, Sullivan suddenly felt trapped.

Princess Ida (1884, the duo's only three - act, blank verse work) was noticeably less successful than its predecessors, although Sullivan's score was praised. With box office receipts lagging, Carte gave the six months' notice for a new opera required under the partnership contract. Sullivan's close friend, the composer Frederic Clay, had suffered a serious stroke in early December 1883 that effectively ended his career. Sullivan, reflecting on this, on his own health, which was delicate, and on his desire to devote himself to more serious music, replied to Carte, "[I]t is impossible for me to do another piece of the character of those already written by Gilbert and myself."

Gilbert had already started work on a new opera involving a plot in which people fell in love against their wills after taking a magic lozenge. Sullivan pronounced it unacceptably mechanical and too similar to their earlier work, and he asked to leave the partnership. Gilbert wrote to Sullivan asking him to reconsider, but the composer replied that he had "come to the end of my tether" with the operas: "I have been continually keeping down the music in order that not one [syllable] should be lost. ... I should like to set a story of human interest & probability where the humorous words would come in a humorous (not serious) situation, & where, if the situation were a tender or dramatic one the words would be of similar character." The impasse was finally resolved when Gilbert proposed a plot that did not depend on any supernatural device. The result was Gilbert and Sullivan's most successful work, The Mikado (1885). The piece ran for 672 performances, which was the second longest run for any work of musical theatre, and one of the longest runs of any theatre piece, up to that time.

Sullivan wished to produce further serious works with Gilbert. He had collaborated with no other librettist since 1875. But Gilbert felt that the success of The Yeomen of the Guard had "not been so convincing as to warrant us in assuming that the public want something more earnest still." He proposed instead that Sullivan should go ahead with his plan to write a grand opera, but should continue also to compose comic works for the Savoy. Sullivan was not immediately persuaded. He replied, "I have lost the liking for writing comic opera, and entertain very grave doubts as to my power of doing it." Nevertheless, a compromise was reached: Sullivan commissioned a grand opera libretto from Julian Sturgis (who was recommended by Gilbert), while suggesting to Gilbert that he revive an old idea for an opera set in the sunshine of Venice. The comic opera was completed first: The Gondoliers (1889) was a piece described by Hughes as a pinnacle of Sullivan's achievement. It was the last great Gilbert and Sullivan success.

The relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan suffered its most serious breach in April 1890, during the run of The Gondoliers, when Gilbert objected to Carte's financial accounts for the production, including a charge to the partnership for the cost of new carpeting for the Savoy Theatre lobby. Gilbert believed that this was a maintenance expense that should be charged to Carte alone. Carte was building a new theatre to present Sullivan's grand opera, and Sullivan sided with Carte, going so far as to testify erroneously as to certain old debts. Gilbert took legal action against Carte and Sullivan, and the public learned that the partnership had come to an acrimonious end.

During the breach with Gilbert, Sullivan composed music for Tennyson's The Foresters, which was a success at Daly's Theatre in New York in 1892, but a failure in London the following year.

Meanwhile, the grand opera, Ivanhoe, based on Walter Scott's novel, opened at Carte's new Royal English Opera House on 31 January 1891. Although the opera itself was a success, running for an unprecedented 155 performances, it passed into virtual obscurity after the opera house failed. It was, as the critic Herman Klein observed, "the strangest comingling of success and failure ever chronicled in the history of British lyric enterprise!" Sullivan did not seriously consider writing grand opera again. Sullivan returned to comic opera, but, not yet reconciled with Gilbert, he sought other collaborators. Haddon Hall (1892), with a libretto by Sydney Grundy, was the first of these. Although based loosely on the historical elopement of Dorothy Vernon with John Manners, Grundy changed the setting from 1563, in the Elizabethan period, to the middle of the English Civil War, allowing for jokes at the expense of the Puritans. Although still comic, the tone and style of the work was considerably more serious and romantic than most of the operas with Gilbert. It enjoyed a modest success and earned critical praise. In 1895, Sullivan once more provided incidental music for the Lyceum, this time for J. Comyns Carr's King Arthur.

The partnership with Gilbert had been so profitable that, after the financial failure of the Royal English Opera House, Carte and his wife sought to reunite the author and composer, eventually succeeding with the help of Tom Chappell, their music publisher. After another Gilbert opera (Utopia Limited, 1893) proved to be only a modest success, Sullivan teamed up again with his old partner, F.C. Burnand. The Chieftain (1894), a heavily revised version of their earlier two - act opera, The Contrabandista, flopped. After The Grand Duke (1896) also failed, Gilbert and Sullivan worked together no more.

In May 1897, Sullivan's full length ballet, Victoria and Merrie England, opened at the Alhambra Theatre to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. The work's seven scenes celebrate English history and culture, with the Victorian period as the grand finale. Its six month run was considered a great success. The Beauty Stone (1898), with a libretto by Arthur Wing Pinero and J. Comyns Carr was based on mediaeval morality plays. The collaboration did not go particularly well: Sullivan wrote that Pinero and Comyns Carr were "gifted and brilliant men, with no experience in writing for music", and, when he asked for alterations to improve the structure, they refused. Sullivan's score, moreover, was too serious for the Savoy audiences' tastes. The opera was both a critical and popular failure, running for a mere seven weeks.

Finally, in The Rose of Persia (1899), Sullivan returned to his comic roots, with a libretto by Basil Hood that combined an exotic Arabian Nights setting with plot elements of The Mikado. Sullivan's tuneful score proved to be his most successful full length opera apart from his collaborations with Gilbert. Another opera with Hood, The Emerald Isle, quickly went into preparation, but Sullivan died before it could be completed.

Having suffered from long standing recurrent kidney disease that made it necessary, from the 1880s, for him to conduct sitting down, Sullivan died of heart failure, following an attack of bronchitis, at his flat in London on 22 November 1900. His unfinished opera, The Emerald Isle, was completed by Edward German and produced in 1901. His Te Deum, written to commemorate the end of the Boer War, was performed posthumously.

A monument in the composer's memory featuring a weeping Muse was erected in the Victoria Embankment Gardens in London and is inscribed with Gilbert's words from The Yeomen of the Guard: "Is life a boon? If so, it must befall that Death, whene'er he call, must call too soon". Sullivan wished to be buried in Brompton Cemetery with his parents and brother, but by order of the Queen he was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. In addition to his knighthood, honours awarded to Sullivan in his lifetime included Doctor in Music, honoris causa, by the Universities of Cambridge (1876) and Oxford (1879); Chevalier, Légion d'honneur, France (1878); The Order of the Medjidieh, by the Sultan of Turkey (1888); and appointment as a Member of the Fourth Class of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO) on 30 June 1897.

In all, Sullivan's artistic output included 23 operas, 13 major orchestral works, eight choral works and oratorios, two ballets, one song cycle, incidental music to several plays, and numerous hymns and other church pieces, songs, parlour ballads, part songs, carols, and piano and chamber pieces. His legacy, apart from writing the Savoy operas and other works that are still being performed is felt perhaps most strongly today through his influence on the American and British musical theatre. The innovations in content and form of the works that he and Gilbert developed directly influenced the development of the modern musical throughout the 20th century. In addition, biographies continue to be written about Sullivan's life and work, and his work is not only frequently performed, but also frequently parodied, pastiched, quoted and imitated in comedy routines, film, television, advertising and other popular media.

Sullivan never married, but he had serious love affairs with several women. The first was with Rachel Scott Russell (1845 – 1882). Sullivan and his friend Frederic Clay were frequent visitors at the Scott Russell home in the mid 1860s, and by 1866 the affair was in full bloom. Rachel's parents did not approve of a possible union to a young composer with uncertain financial prospects, but the two continued to see each other covertly. At some point in 1868, Sullivan started a simultaneous (and secret) affair with Rachel's sister Louise (1841 – 1878). Both relationships had ceased by the end of the decade.

Sullivan's longest love affair was with an American, Mary Frances ("Fanny") Ronalds née Carter, a woman three years Sullivan's senior, who had two children. He met her in Paris around 1867, and the affair began in earnest soon after she moved to London permanently around 1870 – 71. A contemporary account described Fanny Ronalds this way: "Her face was perfectly divine in its loveliness, her features small and exquisitely regular. Her hair was a dark shade of brown – châtain foncé [deep chestnut] – and very abundant... a lovely woman, with the most generous smile one could possibly imagine, and the most beautiful teeth." Sullivan called her "the best amateur singer in London". She often performed Sullivan's songs at her famous Sunday soirees. She became particularly associated with "The Lost Chord", singing it both in private and in public, often with Sullivan accompanying her. When Sullivan died, he left her the autograph manuscript of that song, along with other bequests.

Ronalds was separated from her husband, but she was never divorced. Social conventions of the time compelled Sullivan and Ronalds to keep their relationship private. In his diaries, he would refer to her as "Mrs. Ronalds" when he saw her in a public setting, but "L.W." (for "Little Woman") or "D.H." (possibly "Dear Heart") when they were alone together, often with a number in parentheses indicating the number of sexual acts completed. It is thought that Ronalds was pregnant on at least two occasions, and she apparently procured an abortion in 1882 and again in 1884.

Sullivan had a roving eye, and the diary records the occasional quarrel when his other liaisons were discovered, but he always returned to Ronalds. She was a constant companion (and was well known for performing some of Sullivan's songs) up to the time of Sullivan's death, but around 1889 or 1890, the sexual relationship seems to have ended. He started to refer to her in the diary as "Auntie", and the tick marks indicating sexual activity were no longer there, although similar notation continued to be used for his relationships with other women who have not been identified, and who were always referred to by their initials. In 1896, Sullivan proposed marriage to the 20 year old Violet Beddington, but she refused him.

Sullivan loved to spend time in France (both in Paris and the south of France), where his friends ranged from Princess Marie - Amélie of Orleans to the composer Claude Debussy. In 1865 he was initiated as a Freemason of the aristocratic Studholme Lodge № 1451, where he met and dined with its numerous well connected members. He was the Grand Organist of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1887 during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee.

Sullivan was devoted to his parents, particularly his mother, with whom he corresponded regularly when away from London, until her death in 1882. Henry Lytton wrote, "I believe there was never a more affectionate tie than that which existed between [Sullivan] and his mother, a very witty old lady, and one who took an exceptional pride in her son's accomplishments. Sullivan was also very fond of his brother Fred, whose acting career he assisted whenever possible, and of Fred's children.

When Fred died at the age of 39, he left his pregnant wife, Charlotte, with seven children under the age of 14. After Fred's death, Arthur visited the family often and became guardian to all of the children. In 1883, Charlotte and six of her children emigrated to Los Angeles, California, in the U.S., leaving the oldest boy, Herbert "Bertie" Sullivan, in Arthur Sullivan's sole care. Despite Arthur's reservations about the move to Los Angeles, he paid for the trip and continued to give very substantial financial support to the family. Only a year after moving to Los Angeles, in January 1885, Charlotte died, leaving the six children to be raised mostly by her brother and the older girls, with the financial support of Arthur Sullivan. From June to August 1885, after completing his work on The Mikado, Sullivan travelled to America to visit the family in Los Angeles and to take them on a sightseeing trip of the American west. He continued, throughout the rest of his life, and in his will, to take good care of Fred's children, continuing to correspond with them and to be concerned with their education, marriages and financial affairs. Bertie stayed with his uncle Arthur for the rest of Arthur's life.

Three of Sullivan's cousins, the daughters of his uncle John Thomas Sullivan, performed with D'Oyly Carte: Rose, Jane ("Jennie") and Kate Sullivan, the first two of whom used the stage surname Hervey. Kate was a chorister who defected to the Comedy Opera Company's rival production of H.M.S. Pinafore where she had the opportunity to play Josephine in 1879. Jennie was a D'Oyly Carte chorister for fourteen years. Rose took principal roles in many of the companion pieces that played with the Savoy operas.

Sullivan composed without the use of the keyboard. "I don't use the piano in composition – that would limit me terribly", he told an interviewer, Arthur Lawrence. Sullivan explained that his process of composition was not to wait for inspiration like "a miner seated at the top of a shaft", waiting for "the coal to come bubbling up to the surface.... He has to dig for it.... The first thing I have to decide upon is the rhythm, and I decide on that before I come to the question of melody. The notes must come afterwards.... I mark out the metre in dots and dashes, and not until I have quite settled on the rhythm do I proceed to actual notation." Sullivan's text setting, unlike that of his 19th century English predecessors or his European contemporaries was "vastly more sensitive.... Sullivan's operatic style attempts to create for itself a uniquely English text - music synthesis", and, in addition, by adopting a conservative musical style, he was able to achieve "the clarity to match Gilbert's finely honed wit with musical wit of his own."

In composing the Savoy operas, Sullivan wrote the vocal lines of the musical numbers first, and these were given to the actors. He, or an assistant, improvised a piano accompaniment at the early rehearsals; he wrote the orchestrations later, after he had seen what Gilbert's stage business would be. He left the overtures until last and often delegated their composition, based on his outlines, to his assistants and often incorporating his suggestions or corrections. Those Sullivan wrote himself include Thespis, Iolanthe, Princess Ida, The Yeomen of the Guard, The Gondoliers, The Grand Duke and probably Utopia Limited. Most of the overtures are structured as a potpourri of tunes from the operas in three sections: fast, slow and fast. However, those for Iolanthe, and The Yeomen of the Guard are written in a modified sonata form. The overtures from the Gilbert and Sullivan operas remain popular, and there are many recordings of them. Sullivan invariably conducted the operas on their opening nights.

In 1957, a review in The Times gave this rationale for "the continued vitality of the Savoy operas":

"[T]hey were never really contemporary in their idiom.... Gilbert and Sullivan's [world was] an artificial world, with a neatly controlled and shapely precision.... For this, each partner has his share of credit. The neat articulation of incredibilities in Gilbert's plots is perfectly matched by his language.... [Of] equal importance... Gilbert's lyrics almost invariably take on extra point and sparkle when set to Sullivan's music.... Sullivan's tunes, in these operas, also exist in a make believe world of their own.... [He is] a delicate wit, whose airs have a precision, a neatness, a grace, and a flowing melody".