Gilbert and Sullivan Ida" showed signs of flagging, Carte realised that, for the first time in the partnership's history, no new opera would be ready when the old one closed. On 22 March 1884, he gave Gilbert and Sullivan contractual notice that a new opera would be required in six months' time. In the meantime, when "Ida" closed, Carte produced a revival of "The Sorcerer". The most successful of the Savoy Operas was "The Mikado" (1885), which made fun of English bureaucracy, thinly disguised by a Japanese setting. Gilbert initially proposed a story for a new opera about a magic lozenge that would
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