Background
In honour of the Jubilee, Alfred Maul, manager of the Alhambra Theatre, asked Sullivan to compose a patriotic ballet. As the nation's preeminent composer, Sullivan was the natural choice to write the music. An alternate Jubilee composition, a poem submitted to Sullivan by the Poet Laureate, Alfred Austin, was never set.
Sullivan did most of the composing on the French Riviera, where he alternated between the music desk and the casino. Nevertheless, he took the commission seriously and produced one of his few successes in the decade of the 1890s. Victoria and Merrie England opened on 25 May 1897 and ran for six months at the Alhambra Theatre – a generous run for this type of piece – during which members of the royal family were said to have attended no less than nineteen times.
Read more about this topic: Victoria And Merrie England
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)