he used an old Japanese war song, and his 1882 trip to Egypt inspired musical styles in his later opera The Rose of Persia. Elsewhere, Sullivan wrote undisguised parody. Of the sextet "I Hear the Soft Note" in Patience, he said to the singers, "I think you will like this. It is Dr Arne and Purcell at their best." In his comic operas, he followed Offenbach's lead in lampooning the idioms of French and Italian opera, such as those of Donizetti, Bellini and Verdi. Examples of his operatic parody include Mabel's aria "Poor Wand'ring One" in The Pirates of Penzance, the duet "Who Are You, Sir?" from Cox and Box, and the whispered plans for elopement in "This Very Night" in H.M.S. Pinafore, parodying the conspirators' choruses in Verdi's Il trovatore and Rigoletto. The mock-jingoistic "He Is an Englishman" in H.M.S. Pinafore and choral passages in The Zoo satirise patriotic British tunes such as Arne's "Rule, Britannia!". The chorus "With Catlike Tread" from The Pirates parodies Verdi's "Anvil Chorus" from Il trovatore. Hughes calls Bouncer's song in Cox and Box "a jolly Handelian parody" and notes a strong Handelian flavour to Arac's song in Act III of Princess Ida. In "A More Humane Mikado", at the words "Bach interwoven with Spohr and Beethoven", the clarinet and bassoon quote the fugue subject of Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G minor. Sullivan sometimes used Wagnerian leitmotifs for both comic and dramatic effect. In Iolanthe, a distinctive four-note theme is associated with the title character, the Lord Chancellor has a fugal motif, and the Fairy Queen's music parodies that of Wagner heroines such as Brünnhilde. In The Yeomen of the Guard the Tower of London is evoked by its own motif. This use of the leitmotif technique is repeated and developed further in Ivanhoe. Reputation and criticism Early reception Sullivan's critical reputation has undergone extreme changes since the 1860s when critics, struck by his potential, hailed him as the long-awaited great English composer. His incidental music to The Tempest was received with acclaim at the Crystal Palace, just before his 20th birthday, in April 1862. The Athenaeum commented: His Irish Symphony of 1866 won similarly enthusiastic praise, but as Arthur Jacobs notes, "The first rapturous outburst of enthusiasm for Sullivan as an orchestral composer did not last." A comment typical of those that followed him throughout his career was that "Sullivan's unquestionable talent