‘When you go home at night, it's still swimming around in your head. And when you wake up in the morning, the tunes are still there, you know. And I suppose there could be worse things in your head’, says a member of the Edmund Rice Choral and Musical Society (ERCMS), interviewed in August 2001. ‘I enjoy it when it's on, but I'm also glad when it stops and my life's my own again. I feel I can go and cut the grass, or do the mundane, ordinary things that just get left.’

The Savoy operas occupy a unique place in English performing history as a self-contained genre of light-hearted, accessible (though not always easy) tonal music with plenty of chorus involvement, solo parts of varying dimensions, and (in most cases) a guaranteed happy ending. For decades they have provided amateur performing groups with a reliable formula for fun in rehearsals and popularity with audiences. Out of copyright and with relatively straightforward costume and staging requirements, performing Gilbert and Sullivan is a reasonable aim for amateur groups, and one which musical societies from around the UK and further a field celebrate at the annual Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Buxton, Derbyshire. An empirical study of audience and performer experience at the 2001 festival considers the impact of the Savoy operas on the individuals participating there and on amateur performing culture as a whole.