Although not a grand opera, 'Yeomen' provided Sullivan with the opportunity to write his most ambitious score to date.

Sometime in 1870 Giovanni Ricordi commissioned him to write a third opera, Patria, based on a play by Sardou.

He details how all new media provokes outrage initially: opera, printing, writing, photography, phones,.

These works included a fully-fledged opera, L'Orfeo, written to a libretto by Alessandro Striggio the Younger and presented before the court on 24 February 1607.

He wrote nine operas, collaborated on at least 15 others, wrote a small amount of incidental music for plays, and published seven song collections.

Thee wrote that the film "feels like a dreary soap opera that doesn't belong on the big screen", with "mechanical" acting, "overdramatic" dialogue, and a "disjointed" narrative.

After Sullivan's death, Gilbert wrote only one more comic opera, Fallen Fairies (1909; music by Edward German), which was not a success.

Each opera he did until the last one he wrote in his 80's got better.

Before then, in the United States, he had presented such events as "Make Room for Daddy" - an "opera" written for 11 dogs.

What is difficult is doing it in England, an opera about England written in Italy!