D'Oyly Carte Opera Company create new operas for the company upon six months' notice. Sullivan had not intended immediately to write a new work with Gilbert, but he suffered a serious financial loss when his broker went bankrupt in November 1882 and must have felt the long-term contract necessary for his security. But he soon felt trapped. Gilbert scholar Andrew Crowther comments, regarding the agreement: "Effectively, it made [Gilbert and Sullivan] Carte's employees – a situation which created its own resentments." The partnership's next opera, "Princess Ida", opened in January 1884. Carte soon saw that "Ida" was running weakly at the box office and
Gilbert and Sullivan but he was unable to obtain financing for the project. In early 1876, Carte requested that Gilbert and Sullivan create another one-act opera on the theme of burglars, but this was never completed. Carte's real ambition was to develop an English form of light opera that would displace the bawdy burlesques and badly translated French operettas then dominating the London stage. He assembled a syndicate and formed the Comedy Opera Company, with Gilbert and Sullivan commissioned to write a comic opera that would serve as the centrepiece for an evening's entertainment. Gilbert found a subject in one of his own