<P> Things soon degraded, a legal hearing was held, and Sullivan supported Carte by making an affidavit erroneously stating that there were minor legal expenses outstanding from a battle Gilbert had in 1884 with Lillian Russell . On 5 May 1890, Gilbert had written to Sullivan: "The time for putting an end to our collaboration has at last arrived ." Gilbert later asked Sullivan to say he had been mistaken in his affidavit, but Sullivan refused . Gilbert felt it was a moral issue, and could not look past it . Sullivan felt that Gilbert was questioning his good faith, and in any event, Sullivan had other reasons to stay in Carte's good graces: Carte was building a new theatre, the Royal English Opera House, to produce Sullivan's only grand opera, Ivanhoe . Gilbert brought suit, and after The Gondoliers closed in 1891, he withdrew the performance rights to his libretti, vowing to write no more operas for the Savoy . </P> <P> Gilbert next wrote The Mountebanks with Alfred Cellier and the flop Haste to the Wedding with George Grossmith, and Sullivan wrote Haddon Hall with Sydney Grundy . Gilbert eventually won the lawsuit, but his actions and statements had been hurtful to his partners . Nevertheless, the partnership had been so profitable that, after the financial failure of the Royal English Opera House, Carte and his wife sought to reunite the author and composer . In late 1891, after many failed attempts at reconciliation, Gilbert and Sullivan's music publisher, Tom Chappell, stepped in to mediate between two of his most profitable artists, and within two weeks he had succeeded, eventually leading to two further collaborations between Gilbert and Sullivan . </P> <P> Utopia, Limited (1893), their penultimate opera, was a very modest success, and their last, The Grand Duke (1896), was an outright failure . Neither work entered the canon of regularly performed Gilbert and Sullivan works until the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company made the first complete professional recordings of the two operas in the 1970s . Gilbert had also offered Sullivan another libretto, His Excellency (1894), but Gilbert's insistence on casting Nancy McIntosh, his protege from Utopia, led to Sullivan's refusal, and His Excellency was instead composed by F. Osmond Carr . Meanwhile, the Savoy Theatre continued to revive the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, in between new pieces, and D'Oyly Carte touring companies also played them in repertory . </P> <P> After The Grand Duke, the partners saw no reason to work together again . A last unpleasant misunderstanding occurred in 1898 . At the premiere of Sullivan's opera The Beauty Stone on 28 May, Gilbert arrived at the Savoy Theatre with friends, assuming that Sullivan had reserved some seats for him . Instead, he was informed that Sullivan objected to his presence . The composer later denied that this was true . The last time they met was at the Savoy Theatre on 17 November 1898 at the celebration of the 21st anniversary of the first performance of The Sorcerer . They did not speak to each other . Sullivan, by this time in exceedingly poor health, died in 1900, although to the end he continued to write new comic operas for the Savoy with other librettists, most successfully with Basil Hood in The Rose of Persia (1899). Gilbert also wrote several works, some with other collaborators, in the 1890s . By the time of Sullivan's death in 1900, Gilbert wrote that any memory of their rift had been "completely bridged over," and "the most cordial relations existed between us ." He stated that "Sullivan...because he was a composer of the rarest genius, was as modest and as unassuming as a neophyte should be, but seldom is...I remember all that he has done for me in allowing his genius to shed some of its lustre upon my humble name ." </P>

Title of gilbert and sullivan's last work together