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From the programme.
"The Gondoliers a great success" The Sunday Times 8th Dec 1889
'It is not an opera or a play; it is simply an entertainment - the most exquisite, the daintiest entertainment we have ever seen." Echo
"The performance was from first to last so thoroughly admirable as practically to be beyond criticism." Daily News
So ran some of the newspaper comments after The Gondoliers opened at The Savoy Theatre on 7th December 1889. It ran for 554 performances despite Gilbert's uncharacteristically self-critical statement in a letter to Alfred Austin that 'The piece is ridiculous rubbish and is, accordingly, hailed as a masterpiece." On that opening night nearly all the first act received encores and the set change took thirty minutes. The latter fact caused The Man of the World to advise "the ladies to take their needlework" and that "the gentlemen will find the Savoy Hotel handy."
Both Gilbert and Sullivan had Italian connections. Sullivan's mother was Italian and he had recently visited Venice; Gilbert had spent some time in the country when a child - including an adventure when he was abducted by brigands at the age of two! At the beginning of 1889 they were at loggerheads, each feeling their contributions undervalued by the other, but by May the possibility of a new opera set in Venice had effected a reconciliation.
Holding the distinction of being the longest vocal score of all the G&S collaborations, the suggestion for the lengthy first number of Act I originally came from Gilbert. Sullivan began composing the music in the middle of July 1 889, whilst once again suffering from kidney trouble which gave him much pain. He took a break from working on The Gondoliers to conduct at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester; concerts which included The Golden Legend, The Prodigal Son and the overture to In Memoriam. The abolition of class-distinctions was the butt of Gilbert's satire as well as the personal relevance of equality of librettist and composer reflected in the gondoliers' dilemma over which is the rightful King.
F.C. Burnand, Sullivan's librettist for Cox and Box, and also editor of Punch, summed up Gilbert and Sullivan's success with a cartoon in his magazine on January 4th 1890 which depicted the pair in a parody of the two gondoliers reigning jointly at the start of Act II together with the caption 'Monarchs of all they Savoy".
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