Cups and Saucers

Cups and Saucers premiered in 1876 as part of an evening of piano sketches by Grossmith and was adopted by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in 1878 as a curtain raiser to H.M.S.

It was also toured by that company in 1883 (with Iolanthe) and in 1884 and was revived in 1890 at the Globe Theatre (from 6 to 12 December for 6 performances, as the curtain raiser to Richard Temple's production of Gounod's The Mock Doctor).

The fashion in the late Victorian era was to present long evenings in the theatre, and so producer Richard D'Oyly Carte preceded his Savoy operas with curtain raisers such as Cups and Saucers.

[3] W. J. MacQueen-Pope commented, concerning such curtain raisers: The recently widowed Emily Nankeen Worcester and General Edwin Deelah intend to marry each other, feigning love, but each is secretly interested in the other's purportedly valuable collection of "rare" china, which they plan to sell upon marriage.

She recounts how she came to own the single but highly valuable item in her china collection ("A Friend Most Dear"), the sole remaining saucer from Julius Caesar's favorite tea service, appraised at ten thousand pounds.

Deelah then admits that he never had any real interest in china, but that society had forced him "with the alternative of being thought vulgar, to pretend an affection for its inartistic, ugly beauties at which [his] true soul actually revolts!"