ABSTRACT
While Arthur Sullivan had been in California, his partner had kept a sharp eye—as always—on the Savoy box office. For Sullivan, operetta was only one of three tasks ahead. The composer with whom Sullivan would be matched as a rival in choral music was Gounod, whose reputation was undiminished. The year 1886, as recorded in the diary and letters, and in the comment of newspapers and magazines, gives a fully-rounded picture—professional and domestic—of Arthur Sullivan at the height of his fame. Apart from his own new composition, Sullivan’s major contribution to the programme was to be the first performance at the festival of Bach’s Mass in B minor—a project inspired by the London celebrations of the bicentenary of Bach’s birth. Typically, Sullivan made no comment on the exceptional occasion of that Philharmonic concert, when Saint-Saëns not only directed his remarkable new Symphony no. 3 but played a Beethoven concerto.
