After performances in the spring at Crystal Palace with his own operetta company, Sullivan took his company on tour, in the summer of 1874, appearing in his brother's two collaborations with Burnand, "Cox and Box" and "The Contrabandista", together with a version of Franz von Suppé's "Die schöne Galathee", adapted as a burlesque of Gilbert's play, "Pygmalion and Galatea", in which Sullivan played Midas "the "pseudo" art patron". He again played Cox in "Cox and Box" at the Gaiety Theatre beginning in September 1874. At this time, he met and became firm friends with George Grossmith, before Grossmith had met Sullivan's brother. Later in 1874, he appeared at the Opera Comique as Mercury in "Ixion Rewheel'd", an opéra bouffe extravaganza by F. C. Burnand, with music selected by W. C. Levey, and at the Holborn Amphitheatre as the impoverished and henpecked Duke of Rodomont, in "Melusine the Enchantress" by G. M. Layton and Hervé. In the autumn of that year, he and Carte were both concerned in presenting a touring production of Lecocq's "La fille de Madame Angot", for which Sullivan was credited as "secretary", but in which he did not perform.