D'Oyly Carte Opera Company be released from the partnership on several occasions. Nevertheless, they coaxed eight comic operas out of Gilbert and Sullivan in the 1880s. When "Princess Ida" closed after a comparatively short run of nine months, for the first time in the partnership's history, the next opera was not ready. To make matters worse, Gilbert suggested a plot in which people fell in love against their wills after taking a magic lozenge – a scenario that Sullivan had previously rejected, and he now rejected the "lozenge plot" again. Gilbert eventually came up with a new idea and began work in May 1884.
His Excellency (opera) His Excellency (opera) His Excellency is a two-act comic opera with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by F. Osmond Carr. The piece concerns a practical-joking governor whose pranks threaten to make everyone miserable, until the Prince Regent kindly foils the governor's plans. Towards the end of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership, Arthur Sullivan declined to write the music for this piece after Gilbert insisted on casting his protege, Nancy McIntosh, in the lead role; Sullivan and producer Richard D'Oyly Carte, proprietor of the Savoy Theatre, did not feel that McIntosh was adequate. The opera premiered instead under