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.
Gilbert and Sullivan Faris conducted video recordings of eleven of the operas (omitting the last two) with casts including show-business stars as well as professional singers. Joseph Papp's Broadway production of "The Pirates of Penzance" was put on record in 1981. Since 1994, the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival has released numerous professional and amateur CDs and videos of its productions. Ohio Light Opera has recorded several of the operas in the 21st century. In the past 125 years, Gilbert and Sullivan have pervasively influenced popular culture in the English-speaking world, and lines and quotations from their operas have become part of the