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Sir Arthur Sullivan
May 13, 1842 - November 22, 1900
born in London, England, composed during the Romantic period
Biography
Known in his own time for his serious music as well as for the comic operas that have survived until our own day, English composer Arthur Seymour Sullivan was born in Lambeth, South London; the son of a bandmaster, he was encouraged to pursue his musical talent from an early age. He learned the wind instruments of his father's band and joined the choir of the Chapel Royal. At 14, he won the Mendelssohn Scholarship at the Royal Academy, and in 1858 he went to study in Leipzig, where his teachers included Ignaz Moscheles and Julius Rietz.

In 1861, Sullivan began to make an impact on the London music scene. His music to Shakespeare's The Tempest was performed at the Crystal Palace winter concerts in 1862; the following year he published six Shakespeare songs. In 1864, Sullivan became the organist at Covent Garden, where his ballet L'île enchantée had its premiere.

In 1867, he collaborated with F.C. Burnand on two operettas, Cox and Box and The Contrabandista. Five years later, he worked for the first time with W.S. Gilbert when they jointly created the light opera Thespis for the Gaiety Theatre. The piece was moderately successful, but not enough for its creators to continue working together immediately.