Performer: National Festival Orchestra

This traditional production of Patience was strongly sung and acted and was a joyful evening.

One hundred and sixteen years ago, on 7 March 1896, Gilbert and Sullivan presented before the London public their final Savoy Opera: The Grand Duke.

Few 19th-century operettas exceed HMS Pinafore in style, wit and musical accomplishment; the principal candidates in English are The Mikado, and The Yeoman of the Guard, plus a few offerings by Lionel Monckton and Sidney Jones. Any foreign contender would surely be one of the champagne-soaked Viennese delicacies by the Strauss family or Carl Zeller.