Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack, is one of the earliest plays written by W.S. Gilbert, his first solo stage success. The work is a musical burlesque of Donizetti's "L'Elisir d'Amore", and the music was arranged by Mr. Van Hamme. It opened at the St James's Theatre on 29 December 1866, the last item in a long evening, following a farce and Dion Boucicault's new play "Hunted Down". "Dulcamara" ran for a successful 120 nights. The popularity of the piece encouraged further commissions for opera burlesques from Gilbert,
The Merry Zingara V). The success of "Dulcamara" and "La Vivandière" had shown that Gilbert could write entertainingly in this form, peppered with the dreadful puns traditional in burlesques of the period. The libretti also, at times, show signs of the satire that would later be a defining part of his work. They led to Gilbert's more mature "fairy comedies", such as "The Palace of Truth" (1870) and "Pygmalion and Galatea" (1871), and Gilbert's six German Reed Entertainments which, in turn, led to the famous Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Although Gilbert gave up direct parodies of opera within a couple of years of