Having already mocked the time-honoured institutions, the Navy (HMS Pinafore), the judicature (Trial By Jury) and the archetypal English ‘flower power’ group known as the Aesthetic Movement (Patience), in The Yeomen of the Guard, Gilbert poked gentle fun at the Sovereign’s personal Guard. A standard of the original D’Oyly Carte Company, frequently revived, and even staged within the Tower of London itself, Yeomen is one of Sullivan’s finest scores and the closest the team came, in dramatic terms, to ‘serious’ opera.