ABSTRACT
Sullivan’s collaboration with Gilbert in Trial by Jury brought an exceptionally long and gratifying run of 175 performances during 1875. The quest for instrumentalists was part of an enterprise in which Sullivan was placing his highest hopes as a conductor. To occupy the two months preceding the opening of the Aquarium, Sullivan took on the conductorship of the Glasgow Choral and Orchestral Union, under which Glasgow had newly acquired a regular series of orchestral concerts. Six concerts had been planned, with ‘programmes prepared by Mr George Grove of London in consultation with Mr Sullivan’. Thomas Sullivan had died in the early morning of 23 September 1866, but the two previous days were obviously remembered as those of the family’s vigil. Sullivan was to remain at the school for five years of its six-year existence: in 1882 the school would close its doors, to be absorbed in the new Royal College of Music.
