The Contrabandista

It premiered at St. George's Hall, in London, on 18 December 1867 under the management of Thomas German Reed, for a run of 72 performances.

The success of the performance led to productions for charity at the Adelphi Theatre, at Thomas German Reed's Gallery of Illustration (where it would enjoy a long run in 1869), and elsewhere.

Burnand had been a pioneer in Britain in the 1860s by collaborating on the creation of comic operas with original scores similar to Jacques Offenbach's highly successful French operettas, which had been a sensation in Paris beginning in the 1850s but were just becoming known in London.

[1] Buoyed by the success of Cox and Box, Reed commissioned a two-act opera from Burnand, The Contrabandista, with original music by Sullivan, to open his new St George's Opera House, together with adaptations of two short Offenbach pieces,[1] Ba-ta-clan (as Ching-Chow-Hi) and La Chatte métamorphosée en femme (as Puss in Petticoats).

The Musical Times wrote: "The excellent vein of humour so apparent in [Cox and Box], as well as in the more important Contrabandista, justifies us in the hope that Mr. Sullivan may give us, at no distant date, a real comic opera of native manufacture.

The Comic Opera Guild in the US and Fulham Light Operatic Society in the UK each produced the piece in 1972.

[5] The opera has been seen at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival, most recently in 2012 in an updated staging by Glitter & Twisted Theatre Company, which also presented it in Cheltenham.

Reviewing the 2004 Hyperion recording, Raymond Walker wrote: "Despite a mundane book about Spanish brigands by Frances Burnand (who would later become Editor of Punch) there are good musical ideas in The Contrabandista.

Their Captain, Ferdinand de Roxas, has been dead for three weeks, and the band cannot agree which of the brigand lieutenants, José or Sancho, should replace him.

The Law of the Ladrones holds that when two candidates for Chief have an equal number of votes, then the first foreigner who comes along will be made their leader and Inez's new husband.

Inez orders the boy to take a ransom note to Vasquez and presses the old goatherd into service to guard their prisoner, Rita.

Grigg is formally betrothed to Inez and is ritually installed as Captain of the Ladrones by means of placing the Sacred Hat upon his head.

They tell Grigg that Inez wants blood, and that the new Captain must be daring: he must bring her Sancho's head according to the Law of the Ladrones.

Inez and José prepare to light a fuse leading to a store of dynamite that their late Captain had laid in case of a surprise, as it is the Law of the Ladrones that they must all perish together.