Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte believed that this break ended the initial run, and, therefore, ended the company's rights.

Rupert's daughter, Bridget D ' Oyly Carte, however, believed that the Wykehamist schoolboy described to Wodehouse was not her father but his elder brother Lucas.

Carte later said it was " the scheme of my life " to found a school of high-quality, family-friendly English comic opera, in contrast to the bawdy burlesques and adaptations of French operettas that dominated the London musical stage at that time.

The D ' Oyly Carte Opera Company did not allow any other professional company to present the Savoy operas in Britain until the copyrights expired at the end of 1961, although it licensed many amateur and school societies to do so, beginning in the 19th century.

In 1875, Richard D ' Oyly Carte, one of the impresarios aiming to establish an English school of family-friendly light opera by composers such as Frederic Clay and Edward Solomon as a countermeasure to the continental operettas, commissioned Clay's collaborator, W. S. Gilbert, and the promising young composer, Arthur Sullivan, to write a short one-act opera that would serve as an afterpiece to Offenbach's La Périchole.

Carte was a school acquaintance of a cousin of Wodehouse at Winchester College, according to an introduction to Leave it to Psmith.

Because Gilbert and Sullivan shared his vision of increasing the quality and respectability of English musical theatre, and so broadening its audience through the promotion of well-crafted English light operas, Carte gave them wider authority as director and music director than was customary at that time.

Sullivan and Gilbert and their producer Richard D ' Oyly Carte themselves call their joint works comic operas to distinguish this family-friendly fare from the risqué French operettas of the 1850s and 1860s.

The reception of the piece showed that Carte had been right: there was a promising future in family-friendly English comic opera.

This proved a success, and in 1876 D ' Oyly Carte assembled a group of financial backers to establish the Comedy Opera Company, which was devoted to the production and promotion of family-friendly English comic opera.

* 1844 – Richard D ' Oyly Carte, English talent agent, impresario, and composer ( d. 1901 )

* September 12 – Rupert D ' Oyly Carte, English hotelier, theatre owner and impresario ( b. 1876 )

* April 3 – Richard D ' Oyly Carte, English impresario ( born 1844 )

* November 3 – Rupert D ' Oyly Carte, English hotelier, theatre owner and impresario ( d. 1948 )

* April 2 – Thomas Carte, English historian ( b. 1686 )

Richard D ' Oyly Carte ( 3 May 1844 – 3 April 1901 ) was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era.

On tour in 1871, Carte conducted Cox and Box by composer Arthur Sullivan and dramatist F. C. Burnand, in tandem with English adaptations of two Offenbach pieces, called Rose of Auvergne and Breaking the Spell, in which Carte's client Selina Dolaro appeared.

In 1874, Carte leased the Opera Comique, a small theatre off The Strand, where he presented a Brussels company in the British premiere of the operetta Giroflé-Giroflà by Charles Lecocq, followed by The Broken Branch, an English adaptation of Gaston Serpette's La branche cassée.

Even after the initial production of Trial by Jury, however, Carte continued to produce continental operetta, touring in the summer of 1876 with a repertoire consisting of English adaptations of French opera bouffe ( Offenbach ’ s La Périchole, and La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, Lecocq's La fille de Madame Angot and Léon Vasseur's La Timbale d ' argent ), paired with two one-act English after-pieces ( Happy Hampstead and Trial by Jury ).

Carte had been planning to build a new theatre for several years to promote English comic opera and, in particular, the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

The first English provincial tour opened in 1888, and from then on it was a fixture in the D ' Oyly Carte repertory, with at least one official touring company playing it somewhere in almost every season until the company's closure in 1982.

Carte intended it to be the home of English grand opera, much as his Savoy Theatre had been built as a home for English light opera, beginning with the Gilbert and Sullivan series.

" Sir Henry Wood, who had been répétiteur for the production, recalled in his autobiography that " Carte had had a repertory of six operas instead of only one, I believe he would have established English opera in London for all time.

Thomas Carte ( also John Carte ) ( 1686 – 2 April 1754 ) was an English historian.

* Napoleon Bonaparte, " Thomas Carte ," Napoleon ’ s Notes on English History made on the Eve of the French Revolution, illustrated from Contemporary Historians and referenced from the findings of Later Research by Henry Foljambe Hall.

George Baker with Bridget D ' Oyly Carte, 1964George Baker ( 10 February 1885 – 8 January 1976 ) was an English singer.

But paradoxically, in February 1883, just after Iolanthe opened, Sullivan had signed a five-year agreement with Gilbert and Carte requiring him to produce a new comic opera on six months ' notice.

Remembering Thespis, Carte reunited Gilbert and Sullivan, and the result was the one-act comic opera Trial by Jury.

Between 1868 and 1877, Carte wrote and published the music for a number of his own songs and instrumental works, as well as several comic operas: Doctor Ambrosias – His Secret, at St. George's Hall ( 1868 ); Marie, with librettist E. Spencer Mott, at London's Opera Comique in 1871 ; and Happy Hampstead, with librettist Frank Desprez, which debuted on an 1876 provincial tour and then played at the Royalty Theatre in 1877.

Nevertheless, Carte was able to coax eight comic operas out of his partners in the 1880s.

Gilbert, Sullivan, Carte and other Victorian era British composers, librettists and producers, as well as the contemporary British press and literature, called works of this kind " comic operas " to distinguish their content and style from that of the often risqué continental European operettas that they wished to displace.

The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D ' Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, which became known as the Savoy Operas as a result.

After the end of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership, Carte, and later his widow, Helen ( and her manager from 1901 – 1903, William Greet ), staged other comic operas at the theatre by Arthur Sullivan and others, notably Ivan Caryll, Sydney Grundy, Basil Hood and Edward German.

In November 1877, the Comedy Opera Company, managed by Carte, took on the lease and returned to produce the première of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer, a proudly English comic opera, at the theatre.

Gilbert and Sullivan were commissioned to write a new comic opera, The Sorcerer, starting the series that came to be known as the Savoy Operas ( named for the Savoy Theatre, which Carte later built for these works ) that included H. M. S.

During the production of Gilbert and Sullivan's 1889 comic opera, The Gondoliers, Gilbert became embroiled in a legal dispute with producer Richard D ' Oyly Carte over the cost of a new carpet for the Savoy Theatre and, more generally, over the accounting for expenses of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership.

The BBC assembled a cast to broadcast the opera ( together with the rest of the Gilbert and Sullivan series ) in 1966 ( led by former D ' Oyly Carte comic Peter Pratt ) and again in 1989.

The Criterion Theatre opened on Piccadilly Circus on 21 March 1874, and in 1881, two more houses appeared: the Savoy Theatre in The Strand, built by Richard D ' Oyly Carte specifically to showcase the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, opened on 10 October ( the first theatre to be lit by cooler, cleaner electric lights ), and five days later the Comedy Theatre opened as the Royal Comedy Theatre on Panton Street in Leicester Square.

John Lamb Reed, OBE ( 13 February 1916 – 13 February 2010 ) was an English actor, dancer and singer, known for his nimble performances in the principal comic roles of the Savoy Operas, particularly with the D ' Oyly Carte Opera Company.

He is best known for his work as principal comedian in the Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas, which he performed and recorded with the D ' Oyly Carte Opera Company and other troupes.

In 1934, Lytton's retirement left Green as the principal comedian of the D ' Oyly Carte company, playing all of the comic roles in their repertory over the next five years.