This innovative account of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership provides a unique insight into the experience of both attending and performing in the original productions of the most influential and enduring pieces of English-language musical theatre.

In the 1870s, Savoy impresario Richard D Oyly Carte astutely realized that a conscious move to respectability in a West End which, until then, had favored the racy delights of burlesque and French operetta, would attract a new, lucrative morally decent audience.

This book examines the commercial, material and human factors...