Silk programme for Billie Taylor, Standard Theatre, 1881 Yellow silk programme printed with black typographical ink, mounted on cream cardboard. Although Billee Taylor opened in New York after a successful run in London, American reviews compared it unfavourably to the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. The comic opera, based on a poem and song by the eighteenth-century playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, follows the story of how a gardener and his sweetheart become embroiled in the romantic complications of a Captain and his crew. The Standard Theatre in New York opened as the Eagle Theatre in 1875. After its re-naming in 1878, it played host to several American premieres of Gilbert & Sullivan's operas, earning $100,000 from its run of Patience. In 1898 William Brady and Florenz Ziegfeld took over management, re-christening the theatre once again as the Manhattan Theatre.