The overture proved popular and went on to appear in numerous further concerts. On 13 April 1867, a selection of songs from the opera were performed at The Crystal Palace, arranged for military band by Charles Godfrey Jr. Sullivan found no one willing to produce The Sapphire Necklace, though the overture and selections from it were performed at The Crystal Palace and elsewhere. However, the 1864–65 Pyne and Harrison season at Covent Garden proved to be the company's last, and so they never produced the opera. The Sapphire Necklace was intended to be produced by the Pyne & Harrison Opera Company, which specialised in such romantic English operas. Sullivan' as 'ready', by contrast with operas by Balfe and Wallace described merely as 'in preparation'. Sullivan worked diligently at the four-act opera during 18, and in October 1865 the house journal of publisher Cramer & Co. Later in life Sullivan would say that no other libretto had given him more difficulty, and an 1879 article suggests that he later decided to suppress the opera due to dissatisfaction with the libretto. However, this libretto proved particularly difficult to set. As with some of his other compositions in the 1860s, the libretto was provided by his friend Henry F. He had also set to work on The Sapphire Necklace. By 1864, the young Sullivan had written a ballet ( L'Île Enchantée), orchestral pieces including The Masque at Kenilworth, several hymns, a few piano solos, and some part songs and parlour ballads. 2 Surviving, known music and performancesĪfter his incidental music to The Tempest brought Arthur Sullivan early fame in 1862, he began to experiment with a wide variety of musical compositions.

Sapphire necklace