![]() ![]() As April 1884 wore on, Gilbert tried to modify his plot, but he could not satisfy Sullivan. Sullivan responded that he could not set the "lozenge plot", stating that it was too similar to the plot of their 1877 opera The Sorcerer. ![]() Gilbert wrote that Sullivan's letter caused him "considerable pain". 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. ![]() I have been continually keeping down the music in order that not one should be lost. He wrote to Sullivan asking him to reconsider, but the composer replied on 2 April 1884 that he had "come to the end of my tether" with the operas: Gilbert, who had already started work on a new libretto in which people fall in love against their wills after taking a magic lozenge, was surprised to hear of Sullivan's hesitation. Reflecting on this, on his own precarious health, and on his desire to devote himself to more serious music, Sullivan replied to Carte that "it is impossible for me to do another piece of the character of those already written by Gilbert and myself". Sullivan's close friend, the conductor Frederic Clay, had suffered a serious stroke in December 1883 that effectively ended his career. On 22 March 1884, Carte gave Gilbert and Sullivan contractual notice that a new opera would be required within six months. When ticket sales for Princess Ida showed early signs of flagging, the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte realised that, for the first time since 1877, no new Gilbert and Sullivan work would be ready when the old one closed. Gilbert and Sullivan's opera immediately preceding The Mikado was Princess Ida (1884), which ran for nine months, a short duration by Savoy opera standards. Since the 1990s, some productions of the opera in the United States have drawn criticism for promoting stereotypes of East Asians. Gilbert used foreign or fictional locales in several operas, including The Mikado, Princess Ida, The Gondoliers, Utopia, Limited and The Grand Duke, to soften the impact of his pointed satire of British institutions. Setting the opera in Japan, an exotic locale far away from Britain, allowed Gilbert to satirise British politics and institutions more freely by disguising them as Japanese. The work has been translated into numerous languages and is one of the most frequently played musical theatre pieces in history. The Mikado is the most internationally successful Savoy opera and has been especially popular with amateur and school productions. By the end of 1885, it was estimated that, in Europe and America, at least 150 companies were producing the opera. It opened on 14 March 1885, in London, where it ran at the Savoy Theatre for 672 performances, the second-longest run for any work of musical theatre and one of the longest runs of any theatre piece up to that time. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations. The Mikado or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. For other uses, see Mikado (disambiguation). ![]()
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