its production of Offenbach's La Périchole. To fill out the evening (as long programmes were the fashion in Victorian theatre), he needed another piece. He remembered a libretto for a one-act comic opera that W. S. Gilbert had written and shown to him in 1873, called Trial by Jury. Meanwhile, Sullivan's popular 1867 opera, Cox and Box, had been revived at the Gaiety Theatre in 1874, and Carte had already asked him to write a piece for the Royalty. Carte knew that Gilbert had worked with Sullivan to create Thespis in 1871, and he now suggested that Sullivan could write the music for Trial by Jury. Trial by Jury, a comic treatment of an English courtroom, was an unexpected hit, outrunning La Périchole, and becoming the first step in Carte's scheme to establish a new genre of English comic opera. In June 1875 the Royalty closed for the summer, and Dolaro took her company on tour. While Trial by Jury and La Périchole were playing at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin in September, Carte met Michael Gunn, a co-owner of the Gaiety. Gunn became a close friend of Carte's, later served as a manager in his theatrical company and was a shareholder and director in his hotel business. Even after the initial production of Trial by Jury Carte continued to produce continental operetta, touring in the summer of 1876 with a repertoire consisting of English adaptations of French opéra bouffe (Offenbach's La Périchole, and La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, Lecocq's La fille de Madame Angot and Léon Vasseur's La Timbale d'argent), paired with two one-act English after-pieces (Happy Hampstead and Trial by Jury). Carte was the musical director of this travelling company. In February 1877 Carte, organising a company for a provincial tour of a successful London farce, auditioned a novice actress called Helen Lenoir. He engaged her for a small role, but after a few weeks she left the tour and returned to London where she secured an office post in Carte's agency. She gradually assumed a key role in his business affairs and his personal life. Frank Desprez, the editor of The Era, wrote: "Her character exactly compensated for the deficiencies in his." Encouraged by the success of Trial by Jury, Carte had been attempting since 1875 to raise money for either a revival of Thespis or a new piece. In 1877 he finally found four backers and formed the