His Excellency (opera)

His Excellency is a two-act comic opera with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by F. Osmond Carr. The piece concerns a practical-joking governor whose pranks threaten to make everyone miserable, until the Prince Regent kindly foils the governor's plans. Towards the end of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership, Arthur Sullivan declined to write the music for this piece after Gilbert insisted on casting his protege, Nancy McIntosh, in the lead role; Sullivan and producer Richard D'Oyly Carte, proprietor of the Savoy Theatre, did not feel that McIntosh was adequate.

The opera premiered instead under the management of George Edwardes in 1894 at the Lyric Theatre, running for 162 performances. It starred many of the Savoy Theatre regulars, such as George Grossmith, Rutland Barrington and Jessie Bond, as well as Ellaline Terriss, who was to become a major West End star. It was also produced in New York in 1895, and in German translation at the Carltheater, Vienna, in both 1895 and 1897. The opera also enjoyed a British provincial tour.

From the late 1870s through the 1880s, Gilbert wrote a series of successful comic operas, working almost exclusively with Arthur Sullivan. The Gilbert and Sullivan partnership dissolved for several years after the production of The Gondoliers (1889), because of a financial dispute, but in 1893 they reunited to write Utopia, Limited. Encouraged by the modest success of this piece, the two agreed to write a new piece. In January 1894, Gilbert was ready with the scenario for a libretto that would become His Excellency, and which he hoped Sullivan would set to music. But the two collaborators disagreed over the casting of the leading lady. Gilbert insisted on using his protege, Nancy McIntosh, in the part, who had played the heroine in Utopia. Sullivan and producer Richard D'Oyly Carte, along with many of the critics, had found her unimpressive and did not want her in any more of his operas. The two men were not able to settle their differences, and Gilbert and Sullivan once again had to find different partners.

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