Gilbert and Sullivan There continue to be hundreds of amateur companies performing the Gilbert and Sullivan works worldwide. The first commercial recordings of individual numbers from the Savoy operas began in 1898. In 1917 the Gramophone Company (HMV) produced the first album of a complete Gilbert and Sullivan opera, "The Mikado", followed by recordings of eight more. Electrical recordings of most of the operas were then issued by HMV and Victor, beginning in the late 1920s, supervised by Rupert D'Oyly Carte. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company continued to produce well-regarded recordings until 1979, helping to keep the operas popular through the decades. Many
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