Gilbert and Sullivan of these recordings have been reissued on CD. After the company was revived in 1988, it recorded seven of the operas. After the copyrights on the operas expired, numerous companies around the world released popular audio and video recordings of the operas. In 1966 and again in the 1980s, BBC Radio presented complete cycles of the thirteen extant Gilbert and Sullivan operas, with dialogue. Ad hoc casts of operatic singers conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent in the 1950s and 60s and Sir Charles Mackerras in the 1990s have made audio sets of several Savoy operas, and in the 1980s Alexander
Gilbert and Sullivan stars of whatever theatre he happened to be writing for, as had been the case with "Thespis" and "Trial by Jury". Building on the team he had assembled for "The Sorcerer", Gilbert no longer hired stars; he created them. He and Sullivan selected the performers, writing their operas for ensemble casts rather than individual stars. The repertory system ensured that the comic patter character who performed the role of the sorcerer, John Wellington Wells, would become the ruler of the Queen's navy as Sir Joseph Porter in "H.M.S. Pinafore", then join the army as Major-General Stanley in "The Pirates of