The Sorcerer's Apprentice called"), a garbled version of one of Goethe's lines ('), which is often used to describe a situation where somebody summons help or uses allies that he cannot control, especially in politics. The animated 1940 Disney film "Fantasia" popularized the story from Goethe's poem, and the Paul Dukas symphonic poem based on it, in one of eight animated shorts based on classical music. In the piece, which retains the title "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", Mickey Mouse plays the apprentice, and the story follows Goethe's original closely, except that the sorcerer ("Yen Sid", or "Disney" backwards) is stern and angry with his
The Sorcerer conception as any which has taken form on this modern stage". Later assessments of the opera have often mentioned both the opera's strong and weak points. Audrey Williamson wrote in a 1982 book that the virtues of "The Sorcerer", "in spite of its defects ... justify its place in the repertoire." In 1996, Ian Bradley commented in the introduction to his annotated edition of the Gilbert and Sullivan libretti, "It will certainly be a great pity if it gradually fades away. "The Sorcerer" contains two of W. S. Gilbert's best-drawn characters, the soulful Dr Daly ... and the flashy but