Editing Gilbert and Sullivan (section)

====''The Mikado''====
{{main|The Mikado}}
[[File:The Mikado.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Poster for ''The Mikado'']]
The most successful of the Savoy Operas was ''The Mikado'' (1885), which made fun of English bureaucracy, thinly disguised by a Japanese setting. Gilbert initially proposed a story for a new opera about a magic [[Throat lozenge|lozenge]] that would change the characters, which Sullivan found artificial and lacking in "human interest and probability", as well as being too similar to their earlier opera, ''The Sorcerer''.{{refn|Gilbert eventually found another opportunity to present his "lozenge plot" in ''[[The Mountebanks (opera)|The Mountebanks]]'', written with [[Alfred Cellier]] in 1892.<ref>Stedman, p. 284</ref>|group=n}} As dramatised in the film ''[[Topsy-Turvy]]'', the author and composer were at an impasse until 8 May 1884, when Gilbert dropped the lozenge idea and agreed to provide a libretto without any supernatural elements.{{refn|A story circulated that Gilbert's inspiration for an opera set in Japan came when a Japanese sword mounted on his study wall fell down. The incident is portrayed in the film, but it is apocryphal.<ref>Jones, Brian. "The sword that never fell", ''W. S. Gilbert Society Journal'' 1 (1), Spring 1985, pp. 22–25</ref>|group=n}}

The story focuses on a "cheap tailor", Ko-Ko, who is promoted to the position of Lord High Executioner of the town of Titipu. He loves his ward, Yum-Yum, but she loves a musician, who is really the son of the emperor of Japan (the Mikado) and who is in disguise to escape the attentions of the elderly and amorous Katisha. The Mikado has decreed that executions must resume without delay in Titipu. When news arrives that the Mikado will be visiting the town, Ko-Ko assumes that he is coming to ascertain whether Ko-Ko has carried out the executions. Too timid to execute anyone, Ko-Ko cooks up a conspiracy to misdirect the Mikado, which goes awry. Eventually, Ko-Ko must persuade Katisha to marry him to save his own life and the lives of the other conspirators.

With the opening of trade between England and Japan, Japanese imports, art and styles became fashionable, and a [[Japanese Village, Knightsbridge|Japanese village]] exhibition opened in Knightsbridge, London, making the time ripe for an opera set in Japan. Gilbert said, "I cannot give you a good reason for our... piece being laid in Japan. It... afforded scope for picturesque treatment, scenery and costume, and I think that the idea of a chief magistrate, who is... judge and actual executioner in one, and yet would not hurt a worm, may perhaps please the public."<ref>[http://gsarchive.net/gilbert/interviews/dlynws850121.html "Workers and Their Work: Mr. W.S. Gilbert"], ''Daily News'', 21 January 1885, reprinted at the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed 21 August 2012</ref>

Setting the opera in Japan, an exotic locale far away from Britain, allowed Gilbert and Sullivan to satirise British politics and institutions more freely by clothing them in superficial Japanese trappings. Gilbert wrote, "The Mikado of the opera was an imaginary monarch of a remote period and cannot by any exercise of ingenuity be taken to be a slap on an existing institution."<ref>[http://pamphletpress.org/index.cfm?sec=7&story_id=69 Review of ''The Mikado''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927045525/http://pamphletpress.org/index.cfm?sec=7&story_id=69 |date=27 September 2007}}, Pamphletpress.org, accessed 27 May 2009</ref> [[G. K. Chesterton]] compared it to [[Jonathan Swift|Swift]]'s ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'': "Gilbert pursued and persecuted the evils of modern England till they had literally not a leg to stand on, exactly as Swift did... I doubt if there is a single joke in the whole play that fits the Japanese. But all the jokes in the play fit the English. ... About England Pooh-bah is something more than a satire; he is the truth."<ref>Dark and Grey, p. 101</ref> Several of the later operas are similarly set in foreign or fictional locales, including ''[[The Gondoliers]]'', ''[[Utopia, Limited]]'' and ''[[The Grand Duke]]''.<ref>Bradley (1996), pp. 878, 975 and 1087</ref>

{| style="float:right;"
|{{Listen
|filename=1914 - Edison Light Opera Company - Favorite airs from The Mikado (restored).ogg
|title="Favorite airs from ''The Mikado''"<!--This is the name the recording was released under. Please do not correct it to British spelling-->
|description=A 1914 [[Edison Records]] recording of selections from ''[[The Mikado]]''. Includes parts of the overture, "A wand'ring minstrel", "Three little maids", "Tit-willow", and the Act II finale.
}}
|}
''The Mikado'' became the partnership's longest-running hit, enjoying 672 performances at the Savoy Theatre, and surpassing the runs of ''Pinafore'' and ''Patience''. It remains the most frequently performed Savoy Opera.<ref>Wilson and Lloyd, p. 37</ref> It has been translated into numerous languages and is one of the most frequently played musical theatre pieces in history.<ref>Kenrick, John. [http://www.musicals101.com/gilbert3.htm "The Gilbert & Sullivan Story: Part III], Musicals 101, 2000, accessed 20 July 2021</ref>