Gilbert and Sullivan for All productions of the operas, throughout Britain and made several world tours to North America, Australasia, and the Far East. By 1963, Round had left the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and, together with Adams and Meadmore (a former director of D'Oyly Carte), formed the group. Gilbert and Sullivan for All, usually composed of five or six singers and a pianist, would perform on nights when D'Oyly Carte was playing "The Gondoliers", since Adams was not engaged by D'Oyly Carte to play in that opera. In the early years, the pianist was often the former D'Oyly Carte assistant musical director, William Cox-Ife.
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