The Mikado Premieres: Gilbert & Sullivan's Satire Hits London

Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado opened at the Savoy Theatre in London on March 14, 1885, and the audience loved it so thoroughly that the opera ran for 672 consecutive performances, the longest initial run of any work of musical theater up to that point. The show earned the modern equivalent of millions of pounds and cemented the partnership between librettist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan as the most successful creative collaboration in Victorian entertainment. The Mikado was set in Japan but satirized British society. Gilbert used the fictional town of Titipu and its absurd penal code as a vehicle for mocking Victorian bureaucracy, class pretension, and legal hypocrisy. The Lord High Executioner, Ko-Ko, has been condemned to death for flirting but promoted to executioner because, as the logic goes, he cannot execute himself until he has executed someone else. Every character operates within a system of rules that is simultaneously rigid and nonsensical. The opera arrived during a craze for Japanese art and culture that swept Britain in the 1880s, triggered by the opening of a Japanese exhibition in London. Gilbert seized on the aesthetic novelty while keeping the satire entirely British. Sullivan's score matched the wit of the libretto with music that ranged from mock-operatic grandeur to genuinely beautiful melodic writing. "Three Little Maids from School" and "A Wandering Minstrel I" became immediately popular. The Mikado has been performed more often than any other Gilbert and Sullivan work and ranks among the most frequently staged operatic works in the English language. It has been adapted for film, television, and stage in countless productions worldwide. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which produced all the original Gilbert and Sullivan operas, performed The Mikado continuously for over a century. The work proved that satire, wrapped in enough charm and melody, can entertain audiences who would resist the same criticisms delivered as argument.