In 1875, he created the role of the Learned Judge in Trial by Jury, also playing in the accompanying Offenbach piece, La Périchole, and earning enthusiastic reviews.
[4] Sullivan first appeared in several amateur productions, but in 1869 he made his professional debut as Bouncer in his brother Arthur's first comic opera, Cox and Box, with a libretto by F. C.
[3] In 1870 he played Ali Brown Windsor in a burlesque by Robert Reece, Whittington Junior, and his Sensation Cat, at the New Royalty Theatre, and as Smart in the accompanying farce Rendezvous.
[9] Sullivan created the role of Apollo in his brother's first operatic collaboration with W. S. Gilbert, Thespis, at the Gaiety Theatre, which ran from December 1871 until March 1872.
During this run, he also starred in the companion pieces Dearer than Life by H. J. Byron[10] and Franz von Suppé's Ganymede and Galatea.
[8] He continued to appear at the Gaiety in 1872 and 1873 in Cox and Box and playing Patachon in Offenbach's A Mere Blind (1872), Marquis Beaurivage Fleurette (1873).
[9] After performances in the spring at Crystal Palace with his own operetta company,[11] Sullivan took his own company on tour, in the summer of 1874, appearing in his brother's two collaborations with Burnand, Cox and Box, as Cox, and The Contrabandista, as Grigg, together with a version of Die schöne Galathee adapted as a burlesque of Gilbert's play, Pygmalion and Galatea, in which Sullivan played Midas "the pseudo art patron".
[15] Later in 1874, he appeared at the Opera Comique as Mercury in Ixion Rewheel'd, an opéra bouffe extravaganza by F. C. Burnand, with music selected by W. C. Levey,[5] and at the Holborn Amphitheatre as the impoverished and henpecked Duke of Rodomont, in Melusine the Enchantress by G. M. Layton and Hervé.
[16] In the autumn of that year, he and Carte were both concerned in presenting a touring production of Lecocq's La fille de Madame Angot, for which Sullivan was credited as "secretary", but in which he did not perform.
[17] Sullivan next joined the company of Selina Dolaro at the Royalty Theatre, opening on 30 January 1875 in the role of Don Andres, the British Viceroy, in Offenbach's La Périchole.
"[19] The Times concurred: "Mr. F. Sullivan's impersonation of the learned and impressionable Judge deserves a special word of praise for its quiet and natural humour.
"[20] The Yorkshire Herald thought that the authors "owed much of the success" of Trial to Sullivan's "clever", "refined" and tasteful portrayal of the character.
Despite Arthur's reservations about the move to Los Angeles, he paid for the trip and continued to give very substantial financial support to the family.
[30] From June through August 1885, after completing his work on The Mikado, Arthur Sullivan travelled to America to visit the family in Los Angeles and to take them on a sightseeing trip of the American West, including Yosemite Valley.
Hutchinson, unable to cope with the loss of his wife and overwhelmed by his responsibilities, returned to England later that year, leaving the six children to be raised mostly by Charlotte's brother and the older girls, with the financial support of their uncle Arthur.