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The Mikado: "Object All Sublime"
The D'Oyly Carte Company's 1936 film version of The Mikado, with Martyn Green (center, in black robe) as KoKo.

As a follow-up to Princess Ida, Gilbert offered yet another plot involving a love potion, and when Sullivan balked at this blatant throwback to The Sorcerer, the disagreement soon turned ugly. Sullivan declared that it was time for him to concentrate on more serious compositions, and Gilbert resented the suggestion that their collaboration was somehow holding Sullivan back. D'Oyly Carte staged a revival of The Sorcerer to keep the company going. The partnership was on the brink of collapse when a decorative Japanese sword fell from the wall of Gilbert's study, nearly landing on his head – and inspiring the plot for the most popular show in the G&S canon.

The Mikado (1885 - 672) reflected an 1880s British craze for “all things Japanese.” The complicated plot centers on what happens when a fictional Emperor of Japan decrees that flirting is punishable by death. Because no one in the town of Titipu is willing to enforce this horrible law, a condemned tailor (Koko) is appointed Lord High Executioner – the reasoning being that he cannot behead anyone until he beheads himself. When it turns out he has to execute someone after all, he selects Nanki-Poo, a handsome traveling minstrel. Nanki-Poo will only agree to the scheme if he can first marry the executioner's ward and finance, the lovely Yum-Yum. This would allow the minstrel a month of marital bliss, after which the Executioner can behead the lad and marry his ward as originally planned. However, an aged woman (Katisha) from the royal court appears, announcing that Nanki-poo is actually the crown prince who has been in hiding since toying with her affections! The Mikado himself soon arrives to proclaim that his "object all sublime" is "to let the punishment fit the crime." After a series of deceptions and misunderstandings, no one dies and everything is resolved. 

The Mikado's Japanese setting and costumes masked the fact that it was a send-up of British social customs and pretensions. “Three Little Maids From School,” “A Wand'ring Minstrel I” and “Titwillow” were sung everywhere. In the United States, The Mikado was the only G&S operetta to repeat the impact of H.M.S. Pinafore, as "Mikado-mania" fed a new American passion for all things Japanese. 

The Mikado has been widely performed in languages other than English -- including French, German and even Yiddish. It is also one of the few stage musicals that ever caused a diplomatic fracas. When the Crown Prince of Japan made a state visit to England in 1907, the work was temporarily banned by the British government -- a maneuver that backfired when the prince complained that he had hoped to see The Mikado during his stay. After more than 120 years, it remains one of the most frequently produced musicals of all time, and still receives frequent amateur and professional stagings worldwide.

Living up to The Mikado
Few things are more difficult than trying to follow a success, especially if it's your own. Gilbert and Sullivan's melodramatic spoof Ruddigore (1887 - 288) had its charm, with a fine score and a well crafted story – but many complained that it was not another Mikado. (As if anything could be?) Sullivan once again grumbled that he should be working on more serious compositions, and made it clear that he was ready to abandon operetta altogether. Gilbert enticed him with a libretto unlike any other in the series. Set in the Tower of London during the reign of Henry VIII, The Yeomen of the Guard (1888 - 423) had political intrigue and the threat of execution overshadowing the tale of a jester competing with a nobleman for the love of a lovely girl. Yeoman gave Sullivan the opportunity to compose his most melodically ambitious Savoy score, and Gilbert's script had little trace of his usual "topsy-turvy" humor. The most serious of Gilbert and Sullivan's works, it was Sullivan's personal favorite.

The team resumed their comic ways with The Gondoliers (1889 - 554), the story of two anti-royalist Venetian gondoliers who find themselves the jointly-reigning kings of a revolution-torn country. G&S had tremendous fun with the comparative foibles of monarchy and democracy, and the show became a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic. The reclusive Queen Victoria invited the D'Oyly Carte company to give several private performances of this hit, including a memorable Gondoliers at Windsor Castle (pictured in the thumbnail at left). These performances confirmed the new respectability Gilbert and Sullivan had brought to the musical theatre. No doubt Her Majesty particularly enjoyed a quartet in which the gondoliers and their fiancées sing of what a glorious thing it is "to be a regular royal queen." It was a blatantly affectionate comic tribute to the woman who had ruled Britain for more than half a century.

just when it seemed Gilbert and Sullivan's collaboration was at its peak, it fell apart over several trivial disputes – including an infamous quarrel over the price of some new carpeting in the Savoy Theatre. When Gilbert furiously claimed that he had been overcharged for his share, Sullivan sided with D'Oyly Carte. Carte then produced Sullivan's long awaited grand opera Ivanhoe, which Gilbert had no hand in -- and which proved to be a costly failure. Gilbert, who most scholars feel had made a huge fuss over nothing, resumed writing plays -- which didn't fare much better.

After several years, the Savoy trio effected a reconciliation, but things were never quite the same. Utopia Limited (1893 - 245) made fun of Britain's attempts to take over distant nations and remake them in its own image, and The Grand Duke (1896 -123) had a theatrical troupe trying to seize power in a tottering German principality. While both works were melodic and entertaining, the public felt these works were just more of what they had seen from the team before. As a result, neither show ran long enough to cover high production costs. It seemed that Gilbert and Sullivan were losing the fresh creative edge that had enlivened their previous works.