First Flat Failure; The First Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Not a Success", The New York Times reported, "When the curtain finally fell there was hissing – the first ever heard in the Savoy Theatre. The audience even voiced sentiments in words and there were shouts and cries such as these: 'Take off this rot!' 'Give us The Mikado!'" The paper added, "(T)he name is decidedly against it." The performance was hampered by an off night for Leonora Braham as Rose Maybud and by George Grossmith's usual first night jitters, a week after which he fell dangerously ill and had to be replaced by his understudy, Henry Lytton, for almost three weeks. Sullivan noted in his diary, "Production of Ruddigore at Savoy. Very enthusiastic up to the last 20 minutes, then the audience showed dissatisfaction." Critical reception On the day of the premiere, The New York Times, whose correspondent attended the dress rehearsal the day before, warned, "The music is not up to the standard of Sir Arthur Sullivan. As a whole it is largely commonplace ... Gilbert's dialogue in the first act is here and there very amusing, but in the second it is slow and tedious." The press generally agreed with the Savoy audience that the second act of the premiere was inferior to the first. The Times opined that "the fun which runs alive in the first act runs completely dry in the second, which is long and tedious, and winds up with an anti-climax of inanity." The Times praised both the libretto and the music of the first act ("Everything sparkles with the flashes of Mr. Gilbert's wit and the graces of Sir Arthur Sullivan's melodiousness... one is almost at a loss what to select for quotation from an embarrassment of humorous riches.") but rated the score, as a whole, "of a fair average kind, being not equal to The Sorcerer but certainly superior to Princess Ida." Punch also thought the second act weak: "The idea of the burlesque is funny to begin with, but not to go on with". The Pall Mall Gazette thought the libretto "as witty and fanciful as any of the series" though "the second half of the last act dragged a little." The New York Times reported, "the second (act) fell flat from the beginning and was a gloomy and tedious failure." According to the St. James's Gazette, "gradually the enthusiasm faded