* 1861 – First performance of Arthur Sullivan's debut success, his suite of incidental music for The Tempest, leading to a career that included the famous Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

In 1919, Harold Abrahams ( Ben Cross ) enters the University of Cambridge, where he experiences anti-Semitism from the staff, but enjoys participating in the Gilbert and Sullivan club.

Although focused on his running, he falls in love with a leading Gilbert and Sullivan soprano, Sybil ( Alice Krige ).

* 1946 – Gilbert O ' Sullivan, Irish singer

* 1871 – Gilbert and Sullivan collaborate for the first time, on their lost opera, Thespis.

In 1960, Groucho, a lifelong devotee of the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, appeared as Koko the Lord High Executioner in a televised production of The Mikado on NBC's Bell Telephone Hour.

Category: People associated with Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert ( 1836 – 1911 ) and the composer Arthur Sullivan ( 1842 – 1900 ).

Gilbert and Sullivan introduced innovations in content and form that directly influenced the development of musical theatre through the 20th century.

Producer Richard D ' Oyly Carte brought Gilbert and Sullivan together and nurtured their collaboration.

Ages Ago, during the rehearsals for which Frederic Clay introduced Gilbert to Sullivan

At a rehearsal for one of these entertainments, Ages Ago ( 1869 ), the composer Frederic Clay introduced Gilbert to his friend, the young composer Arthur Sullivan.

Two years later, Gilbert and Sullivan would write their first work together.

In 1871, producer John Hollingshead brought Gilbert and Sullivan together to produce a Christmas entertainment, Thespis, at his Gaiety Theatre, a large West End house.

Unlike the later Gilbert and Sullivan works, it was hastily prepared, and its nature was more risqué, like Gilbert's earlier burlesques, with a broader style of comedy that allowed for improvisation by the actors.

Over the next four years, Gilbert and Sullivan did not have occasion to work together again, but each man became more eminent in his field.

Gilbert already had available the libretto he had written for Rosa, and Carte suggested that Sullivan write the score.

After the success of Trial by Jury, Gilbert and Sullivan were suddenly in demand to write more operas together.

Carte proposed a revival of Thespis for the 1875 Christmas season, which Gilbert and Sullivan would have revised, but he was unable to obtain financing for the project.

In early 1876, Carte requested that Gilbert and Sullivan create another one-act opera on the theme of burglars, but this was never completed.

He assembled a syndicate and formed the Comedy Opera Company, with Gilbert and Sullivan commissioned to write a comic opera that would serve as the centrepiece for an evening's entertainment.

Gilbert and Sullivan were tireless taskmasters, seeing to it that The Sorcerer opened as a fully polished production, in marked contrast to the under-rehearsed Thespis.

He built the Savoy Theatre in 1881 to present their joint works ( which came to be known as the Savoy Operas ) and founded the D ' Oyly Carte Opera Company, which performed and promoted Gilbert and Sullivan's works for over a century.

This event cleared the way for Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan to form the D ' Oyly Carte Opera Company, which then produced all of their succeeding operas.

Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte tried for many years to control the American performance copyrights over their operas, without success.

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.

Sullivan had been satisfied with the libretto, but two months after Ida opened, Sullivan told Carte that " it is impossible for me to do another piece of the character of those already written by Gilbert and myself.

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.

In 1875, however, producer Richard D ' Oyly Carte reunited Gilbert and Sullivan to create a one-act piece, Trial by Jury, which became a surprise hit.

Carte used his profits from the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership to build the Savoy Theatre in 1881, and their joint works then became known as the Savoy operas.

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

To that end, he brought together dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan and, together with his wife Helen Carte, he nurtured their collaboration on a series of thirteen Savoy Operas.

He founded the D ' Oyly Carte Opera Company and built the state-of-the-art Savoy Theatre to host the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

Carte knew that Gilbert had worked with Sullivan to create Thespis in 1871, and he now suggested that Sullivan could write the music for Trial by Jury.

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.

This allowed Carte to lease the Opera Comique and to give Gilbert and Sullivan firm terms for a new opera.

Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte were able to select their own cast, instead of using the players under contract to the theatre where the work was produced, as had been the case with their earlier works.

Carte persuaded Gilbert and Sullivan that when their original agreement with the Comedy Opera Company expired in July 1879, a business partnership among the three of them would be to their advantage.

Legal action over the ownership of the rights ended in victory for Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan.

From 1 August 1879, the new company, later called the D ' Oyly Carte Opera Company, became the sole authorised producer of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Over 150 unauthorised productions sprang up in America alone, but because American law then offered no copyright protection to foreigners, Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan were not able to demand royalties from, or to control the artistic content of, these productions.

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.