Darrell Fancourt performed in opera productions at the Academy, creating the role of Tackleton, the toy merchant, in Alexander Mackenzie's opera "The Cricket on the Hearth", and playing Colas in Mozart's "Bastien und Bastienne", and Benoit in "La bohème". "The Times" thought him "amusing but not noticeably musical" in the last. Even before completing his studies, Fancourt was building a concert career in London, the British provinces and the European continent. "The Times" said of an Aeolian Hall recital in 1912, "Mr. Fancourt has some noble notes in his voice, except when he forces it occasionally ... Schubert's "Tod und das Mädchen"
Comic opera 18th century. In the 19th century, Russian comic opera was further developed by Alexey Verstovsky who composed more 30 opera-vaudevilles and 6 grand operas (most of them with spoken dialogue). Later, Modest Mussorgsky worked on two comic operas, "The Fair at Sorochyntsi" and "Zhenitba" ("The Marriage"), which he left unfinished (they were completed only in the 20th century). Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote a comic opera, "Cherevichki" (after Nikolai Gogol, 1885, 1887 Moscow). Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov composed "May Night" 1878–1879 and "The Golden Cockerel" 1906–1907. In the 20th century, the best examples of comic opera by Russian composers were Igor Stravinsky's "Mavra" (1922)