"The Gordon 'At Home' Party". It comprised variously four or five performers, playing a series of short pieces including Mock Turtles. He also ran his own band. By the early 1900s, he was working as a freelance conductor and stage director for British amateur operatic societies. Among the works he directed were Sullivan's The Emerald Isle, Planquette's Les cloches de Corneville, Cellier's Dorothy and The Mountebanks, and Gilbert's play Sweethearts. D'Oyly Carte stage manager and director Throughout his freelance period Gordon maintained his links with D'Oyly Carte, coaching young singers for the touring companies and the Savoy in his spare time. After Carte's death in 1901, Gordon continued to coach singers for Helen Carte after she took over the opera company. In March 1907 he served as stage manager to the D'Oyly Carte touring company. At the Savoy in July of that year, during the D'Oyly Carte's first London repertory season, he directed the revival of Iolanthe. In 1910 Gordon accepted Helen Carte's offer of a permanent position as stage manager to the company, and he gave up his freelance activities. Gilbert died in 1911, and Helen Carte died two years later. The opera company was inherited by her stepson, Rupert D'Oyly Carte, who, according to a 2014 biographical sketch of Gordon, needed a stage manager who would maintain the company's production standards and preserve Gilbert's traditions and style. Gordon's skills, attention to detail and tenacity, together with his experience with the company under Gilbert's direction, were what Carte required. One of Carte's priorities was to arrive at an authorised text. Over the years Gilbert had tweaked his libretti, removing out-of-date references and adding new ones. He had also permitted a few interpolations by senior members of the company. Gordon, whose close contacts with Gilbert had included work on the prompt books for the Savoy operas, was entrusted with preparing an authoritative set of libretti. In general, he retained the few "gags" that Gilbert had approved, and otherwise returned to the original 1870s and '80s texts. Gordon stage managed and then directed D'Oyly Carte productions for the next twenty-eight years. He coached new artists on the blocking, dances, and line readings for each part, and maintained strict quality control over the productions. He was named stage director for the company in 1922 and served in that capacity for seventeen years. When The Sorcerer was revived in 1916 after a long