hard work, and devotion of life to the call of duty? That clever song "The pale young curate", with its charming music, is to me simply painful. I seem to see him as he goes home at night, pale and worn with the day's work, perhaps sick with the pestilent atmosphere of a noisome garret where, at the risk of his life, he has been comforting a dying man – and is your sense of humour, my reader, so keen that you can laugh at that man? Four numbers were encored during the opening night: Aline's aria "Oh, happy young heart", "My name is John Wellington Wells", the Act II quintet "I rejoice that it's decided" and Sir Marmaduke's and Lady Sangazure's duet "Welcome joy, adieu to sadness". The Observer called this duet "a masterpiece of construction. ... The Baronet sings to the accompaniment of a gavotte, and suddenly bursts forth into a rapid semi-quaver passage, expressive of his admiration of the lady. She follows his example, and while one sings a slow movement the other sings the presto movement alternatively". The Era called the quintet "the gem of the opera", because it is "written with delightful fluency and grace, is admirably harmonised, and the melody is as fresh as May dew." Punch argued that "the quintette and the old-fashioned duet with minuet step are the two best numbers" in the opera. Revivals and later assessments Both revivals during the composer's lifetime were successful. The Times called the 1884 revival "distinctly a step in the right direction" and in 1898 the paper claimed that "The Sorcerer is very far from having exhausted its popularity". A review of the 1886 Australian production ranked the opera in "a middle place in Gilbert and Sullivan compositions. Abounding in tuneful numbers, one or two of which rank with anything that has come from Sir Arthur Sullivan's pen, the orchestration is thin compared with that of his later operas and its melodies have never taken the same popular hold as those of Pinafore, a work of about equal calibre from a musical point of view. ... The libretto is sparkling and pungent, and the idea of presenting a British bagman in the guise of a controller of demons and vendor of family curses is as happy a conception as any which has taken form on this modern stage". Later assessments of the opera have often