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
New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players the other founders were alumni of the Barnard Gilbert and Sullivan Society, a New York City college theatre group that presented the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan at Columbia University from 1948 to 1991. The nascent group's first performance was in Straus Park, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, on July 14, 1974 as part of a street fair. In the early years of the company, singers were drawn from Columbia University and from the semi-pro New York theatre community, including Vincent La Selva's opera workshop, and sang without compensation. Originally called "West Side Gilbert & Sullivan Players", the