Although a respectable hit, Gilbert and Sullivan's "Princess Ida" is criticized for being routine. Arthur Sullivan tends to agree, finding he has run out of musical ideas for Gilbert's increasingly predictable stories. He would rather be composing a full opera, an idea that jeopardizes not only the pair's relationship but the future of the stage company that Richard D'Oyly Carte has built around the comic operas. Then Mrs. Gilbert persuades her husband to take her to an exhibition of Japanese life....
