Gilbert and Sullivan he offered a compromise that Sullivan eventually accepted. The two would write a light opera for the Savoy, and at the same time, Sullivan a grand opera ("Ivanhoe") for a new theatre that Carte was constructing to present British grand opera. After a brief impasse over the choice of subject, Sullivan accepted an idea connected with Venice and Venetian life, as "this seemed to me to hold out great chances of bright colour and taking music." "The Gondoliers" (1889) takes place partly in Venice and partly in a kingdom ruled by a pair of gondoliers who attempt to remodel the
Gilbert and Sullivan of the opera. In 1880, Sullivan's cantata "The Martyr of Antioch" premiered at the Leeds Triennial Music Festival, with a libretto modified by Gilbert from an 1822 epic poem by Henry Hart Milman concerning the 3rd century martyrdom of St. Margaret of Antioch. Sullivan became the conductor of the Leeds festival beginning in 1880 and conducted the performance. The Carl Rosa Opera Company staged the cantata as an opera in 1898. "Patience" (1881) satirised the aesthetic movement in general and its colourful poets in particular, combining aspects of Algernon Charles Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Oscar Wilde, James McNeill Whistler and