Cox and Box quickly became a Victorian staple, with additional productions in Manchester in 1869 and 1871, at London’s Gaiety Theatre in 1872, 1873, and 1874, and Manchester again in 1874 (paired with The Contrabandista).

There were also numerous charity performances, including two at the Gaiety during the run of Thespis, and another in Switzerland in 1879 with Sullivan himself as Cox. The first documented American production opened on April 14, 1879 at the Standard Theatre, in New York, as a curtain-raiser to a “pirated” production of H.M.S. Pinafore.

The Sorcerer Overview

The Sorcerer is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Arthur Sullivan. It opened on November 17, 1877 at the Opera Comique in the Strand in London, where it ran for 178 performances. For the 1884 revival, Gilbert and Sullivan abridged the ending to Act I, and provided a new opening to Act II, and it is in this form that the work is usually presented today.

The first American production was at the Broadway Theatre in New York on February 21, 1879, for a run of just 20 performances. There were later professional revivals in New York, none of them under D’Oyly Carte auspices, in 1879, 1882, and 1883.

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