Gilbert and Sullivan or "entertainments", for Thomas German Reed. At a rehearsal for one of these entertainments, "Ages Ago", in 1870, the composer Frederic Clay introduced Gilbert to his friend, the young composer Arthur Sullivan. Over the next year, before the two first collaborated, Gilbert continued to write humorous verse, stories and plays, including the comic operas "Our Island Home" (1870) and "A Sensation Novel" (1871), and the blank verse comedies "The Princess" (1870), "The Palace of Truth" (1870) and "Pygmalion and Galatea" (1871). Sullivan was born in London on 13 May 1842. His father was a military bandmaster, and by the time
W. S. Gilbert his friend, Arthur Sullivan. The Bab Ballads and Gilbert's many early musical works gave him much practice as a lyricist even before his collaboration with Sullivan. Many of the plot elements of the German Reed Entertainments (as well as some from his earlier plays and Bab Ballads) would be reused by Gilbert later in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. These elements include paintings coming to life ("Ages Ago", used again in "Ruddigore"), a deaf nursemaid binding a respectable man's son to a "pirate" instead of to a "pilot" by mistake ("Our Island Home", 1870, reused in "The Pirates of Penzance"),