An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer The lyrics of "The Elements" are a recitation of the names of all the chemical elements that were known at the time of writing, up to number 102, nobelium. It can be found on his albums "Songs & More Songs by Tom Lehrer" as well as "An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer". The song is sung to the tune of Sir Arthur Sullivan's "Major General's Song" ("I am the very model of a modern major-general...") from "The Pirates of Penzance". Since that time, 16 more have been discovered. At his concert in Copenhagen (1967), Lehrer admitted, "I like to play
Gilbert and Sullivan is more often heard than the original overture by Clarke. Toye's "Pirates" overture, however, did not last long and is now presumed lost. Sir Malcolm Sargent devised a new ending for the overture to "The Gondoliers", adding the "cachucha" from the second act of the opera. This gave the "Gondoliers" overture the familiar fast-slow-fast pattern of most of the rest of the Savoy Opera overtures, and this version has competed for popularity with Sullivan's original version. Gilbert and Sullivan operas have been translated into many languages, including Portuguese, Yiddish, Hebrew, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Estonian, Hungarian, Russian, Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish