In 1888, Thomas Edison sent his "Perfected" Phonograph to George Gouraud in London, England, and on 14 August 1888, Gouraud introduced the phonograph to London in a press conference, including the playing of a piano and cornet recording of Sullivan's "The Lost Chord", one of the first recordings of music ever made. A series of parties followed, introducing the phonograph to members of society at the so-called "Little Menlo" in London. Sullivan was invited to one of these on 5 October 1888. After dinner, he recorded a speech to be sent to Edison, saying, in part:
I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the result of this evening's experiments: astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever. But all the same I think it is the most wonderful thing that I have ever experienced, and I congratulate you with all my heart on this wonderful discovery.
These recordings were discovered in the Edison Library in New Jersey in the 1950s:
The Lost Chord
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One of the recordings played at the 14 August 1888 press conference that introduced the phonograph to London.
After-dinner speech at the Little Menlo
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Sullivan's phonographic letter to Thomas Edison, 5 October 1888
The first commercial recordings of Sullivan's music, beginning in 1898, were of individual numbers from the Savoy operas. In 1917, the Gramophone Company (also known as HMV) produced the first album of a complete musical score of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, The Mikado, followed by recordings of eight more of the operas. Electrical recordings of the complete musical scores of most of the operas were then issued by the Gramophone Company and Victor Talking Machine Company beginning in the late 1920s. These recordings were supervised by Rupert D'Oyly Carte. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company continued to produce recordings until 1979. Between 1988 and 2003, after the company was revived, it recorded seven of the operas.
Other recordings have been made by opera companies such as Gilbert and Sullivan for All, English National Opera and Australian Opera. Ad hoc companies of operatic singers conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent in the 1950s and 60s and Sir Charles Mackerras in the 1990s have made audio sets of several Savoy operas, and in the 1980s Alexander Faris conducted video recordings of most of the operas with casts including show-business stars as well as professional singers. The long-running Broadway production of The Pirates of Penzance presented by Joseph Papp, re-orchestrated with synthesisers replacing the strings, was put on record in 1981. Since 1994, the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival has released numerous professional and amateur CDs and videos of its productions and other Sullivan recordings.
Sullivan's non-Savoy works were infrequently recorded until more recent decades. A few of his songs were put on disc in the early years of the 20th century, including versions of "The Lost Chord" by Enrico Caruso and Clara Butt. The first of many recordings of the Overture di Ballo was made in the 1940s. Sullivan's Irish symphony was first recorded in 1968 under Sir Charles Groves. Since then, much of Sullivan's serious music and his operas without Gilbert have been recorded. The first recording of the cello concerto was by Julian Lloyd Webber in 1986. Ivanhoe was recorded under the conductor David Lloyd-Jones in 2009, and The Golden Legend was recorded under Ronald Corp in 2001. Mackerras's Sullivan ballet score, Pineapple Poll, has received many recordings since its premiere in 1951, four of them conducted by Mackerras.