His Excellency (opera)

His Excellency is a two-act comic opera with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by F. Osmond Carr. The piece concerns a practical-joking governor whose pranks threaten to make everyone miserable, until the Prince Regent kindly foils the governor's plans. Towards the end of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership, Arthur Sullivan declined to write the music for this piece after Gilbert insisted on casting his protege, Nancy McIntosh, in the lead role; Sullivan and producer Richard D'Oyly Carte, proprietor of the Savoy Theatre, did not feel that McIntosh was adequate.

The opera premiered instead under the management of George Edwardes in 1894 at the Lyric Theatre, running for 162 performances. It starred many of the Savoy Theatre regulars, such as George Grossmith, Rutland Barrington and Jessie Bond, as well as Ellaline Terriss, who was to become a major West End star. It was also produced in New York in 1895, and in German translation at the Carltheater, Vienna, in both 1895 and 1897. The opera also enjoyed a British provincial tour.