Gilbert and Sullivan place a piece like this on the stage in so complete a fashion." The opera enjoyed a run longer than any of their other joint works except for "H.M.S. Pinafore", "Patience" and "The Mikado". There was a command performance of "The Gondoliers" for Queen Victoria and the royal family at Windsor Castle in 1891, the first Gilbert and Sullivan opera to be so honoured. "The Gondoliers" was Gilbert and Sullivan's last great success. Gilbert and Sullivan sometimes had a strained working relationship, partly caused by the fact that each man saw himself as allowing his work to be subjugated to
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