The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan at Windsor Castle but astonishes Sullivan by choosing to hear "The Gondoliers". Apart from Gilbert, Sullivan comes to realise that his true gifts lie with light music. Richard and Helen Carte toast the arrival of the twentieth century, hoping for a revival of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership. Stopping by at a rehearsal for a revival of "The Yeomen of the Guard", Gilbert runs into Sullivan, after having been apart for years. Sullivan is ill and using a wheelchair. The two men make up and propose taking a curtain call together with Carte, all three of them in wheelchairs. During
Gilbert and Sullivan outright failure. Neither work entered the canon of regularly performed Gilbert and Sullivan works until the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company made the first complete professional recordings of the two operas in the 1970s. Gilbert had also offered Sullivan another libretto, "His Excellency" (1894), but Gilbert's insistence on casting Nancy McIntosh, his protege from "Utopia", led to Sullivan's refusal, and "His Excellency" was instead composed by F. Osmond Carr. Meanwhile, the Savoy Theatre continued to revive the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, in between new pieces, and D'Oyly Carte touring companies also played them in repertory. After "The Grand Duke", the partners