National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company scenery." A review of their "Princess Ida" was likewise effusive. Recordings of the company's productions are sold by the Festival on DVD. Some of the productions are also available on CD. National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company The National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company (formerly the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company) is an English professional repertory company that performs Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas. Founded in 1995 to perform at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival, the company generally stages three or four productions each summer, giving up to 16 performances in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, and also touring. The company
Gilbert and Sullivan organist and composed numerous hymns, popular songs, and parlour ballads. Sullivan's first foray into comic opera was "Cox and Box" (1866), written with librettist F. C. Burnand for an informal gathering of friends. Public performance followed, with W. S. Gilbert (then writing dramatic criticism for the magazine "Fun") saying that Sullivan's score "is, in many places, of too high a class for the grotesquely absurd plot to which it is wedded." Nonetheless, it proved highly successful, and is still regularly performed today. Sullivan and Burnand's second opera, "The Contrabandista" (1867) was not as successful. In 1871, producer John Hollingshead brought