As well as being a hotelier, composer and theatre manager, Richard D’Oyly Carte was also a talent agent and comic opera enthusiast. The ‘scheme of his life’, as he called it, was to make comic opera as popular in England as it was in France. It was this desire that led him to bring Gilbert and Sullivan together.

In 1881, after nearly ten years of collaboration, Carte decided that he would open his own theatre to showcase the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. When it was built, the Savoy Theatre was at the forefront of innovation. Carte and his manager, George Edwardes introduced numbered seating, free programmes, and a no tipping policy for the cloakroom. Most impressively, the Savoy Theatre was the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electricity. Thanks to this innovation, Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe was one of the first ever productions to use electricity in the staging.