he also essayed grand opera with no little success.

The experiment made by the Carl Rosa company in 1899 of playing his
early oratorio, 'The Martyr of Antioch,' as an opera had, not
unnaturally, very little success, but 'Ivanhoe' (1891) showed that
Sullivan could adapt his style to the exigencies of grand opera with
singular versatility. 'Ivanhoe' was handicapped by a patchy and unequal
libretto, but it contained a great deal of good music, and we have
probably not heard the last of it yet. For the present generation,
however, Sullivan's fame rests almost entirely upon his comic operas,
which indeed have already attained something like the position of
classics and may prove, it is sincerely to be hoped, the foundation of
that national school of opera which has been so often debated and so
ardently desired, but is still, alas! so far from practical realisation.

Sullivan's first essay in comic opera dates from the year 1867, which
saw the production of his 'Contrabandista' and 'Cox and Box,' both
written to libretti by Sir Frank Burnand, and both showing not merely
admirable musicianship and an original vein of melody, but an
irresistible sense of humour and a rare faculty for expressing it in
music. 'Thespis' (1871) first brought him into partnership with Mr.
Gilbert, a partnership which was further cemented by 'Trial by Jury'
(1875). It was 'Trial by Jury' that opened the eyes of connoisseurs to
the possibilities lying within the grasp of these two young men, whose
combined talents had produced a work so entirely without precedent in
the history of English or indeed of any music. The promise of 'Trial by
Jury' was amply borne out by 'The Sorcerer' (1877), which remains in the
opinion of many the best of the whole series of Gilbert and Sullivan
operas--but indeed there is hardly one of them that has not at one time
or another been preferred above its fellows by expert opinion. 'The
Sorcerer' naturally gave Sullivan more scope than 'Trial by Jury.' Here
for the first time he showed what he could do in what may be called his
old English vein, in reproduction of the graceful dance measures of old
time, and in imitations of Elizabethan madrigals so fresh and tuneful
that they seem less the resuscitation of a style long dead than the
creation of an entirely new art-form. In a different vein was the
burlesque incantation, a masterpiece of musical humour, in which the
very essence of Mr. Gilbert's strange topsy-turvydom seem