rapture unforeseen" (Ensemble) Productions Pinafore opened on 25 May 1878 at the Opera Comique, before an enthusiastic audience, with Sullivan conducting. Soon, however, the piece suffered from weak ticket sales, generally ascribed to a heat wave that made the Opera Comique particularly uncomfortable. The historian Michael Ainger questions this explanation, at least in part, stating that the heat waves in the summer of 1878 were short and transient. By mid-August, Sullivan wrote to his mother that cooler weather had arrived, which was good for the show. In the meantime, the four partners of the Comedy Opera Company lost confidence in the opera's viability and posted closing notices. Carte publicised the piece by presenting a matinee concert performance on 6 July 1878 at the enormous Crystal Palace. In late August 1878, Sullivan used some of the Pinafore music, arranged by his assistant Hamilton Clarke, during several successful promenade concerts at Covent Garden that generated interest and stimulated ticket sales. By September, Pinafore was playing to full houses at the Opera Comique. The piano score sold 10,000 copies, and Carte soon sent two additional companies out to tour in the provinces. Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan now had the financial resources to produce shows themselves, without outside backers. Carte persuaded the author and composer that a business partnership among the three would be to their advantage, and they hatched a plan to separate themselves from the directors of the Comedy Opera Company. The contract between Gilbert and Sullivan and the Comedy Opera Company gave the latter the right to present Pinafore for the duration of the initial run. The Opera Comique was obliged to close for drain and sewer repairs, and it was renovated by E. W. Bradwell, from Christmas 1878 to the end of January 1879. Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte believed that this break ended the initial run, and, therefore, ended the company's rights. Carte put the matter beyond doubt by taking a six-month personal lease of the theatre beginning on 1 February 1879, the date of its re-opening, when Pinafore resumed. At the end of the six months, Carte planned to give notice to the Comedy Opera Company that its rights in the show and the theatre had ended. Meanwhile, numerous versions of Pinafore, unauthorised by its creators, began playing in America with great success, beginning with a production in Boston that opened on 25 November 1878. Pinafore became a source