revival, and it still receives regular productions, both professional and amateur. The following table summarises the main London productions of The Sorcerer during Gilbert and Sullivan's lifetimes: Reception 1877 reaction The early reviews were generally favourable. According to The Times, The Sorcerer "achieved a genuine success, and, moreover, a success in every respect deserved". The Era praised both libretto and music: "the libretto, both in the prose and poetical portions, displays remarkable facility in writing fanciful and witty dialogue; and the lively flow of Mr. Sullivan's music, always tuneful, bright, and sparkling, and frequently reaching a very high standard of excellence, could hardly fail to please." Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper called it "a very amusing work", and Reynolds's Newspaper proclaimed it "one of the best entertainments of the kind that has yet been placed on the stage". As with their previous opera, Trial by Jury, the integration of Gilbert's words and Sullivan's music was emphasised. The Times commented that "the music is spontaneous, appearing invariably to spring out of the dramatic situations, as though it was their natural concomitant"; The Musical Times mused that "it seems as if every composition had grown up in the mind of the author as he wrote the words"; and The Pall Mall Gazette called the union between composer and librettist "well-assorted", arguing that "the opera contains several very happily designed pieces, in which one cannot tell (and need not know) whether the merit of the original underlying idea belongs to the composer of the poem or to the author of the score". A dissenting voice was Figaro, which claimed that there was nothing in The Sorcerer that could not have been written by "any theatrical conductor engaged at a few pounds a week". It also criticised Sullivan for wasting his talent on comic opera; such criticism would follow him through the rest of his career. Monthly Musical Record objected to the comic depiction of a clergyman, commenting that "the earnest, hard-working, and serious Clergy should not be made the subject of sneering caricature upon the stage", and Lewis Carroll wrote in his 1888 essay: Mr. Gilbert – to whom we owe a deep debt of gratitude for the pure and healthy fun he has given us in such comedies as "Patience" – seems to have a craze for making bishops and clergymen contemptible. Yet are they behind other professions in such things as earnestness, and