Performer: Ian Belsey

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.

The Gilbert and Sullivan canon perhaps achieves the pinnacle of its greatness with The Mikado. The ninth of their fourteen collaborations, it was premièred at the Savoy Theatre in 1885 and the gentlemen were rewarded with an extraordinary success.