On May 25, 1878, Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore opened at the Opera Comique in London.
Image is a detail from an 1879 theater poster.
In America and in most of the world, Gilbert and Sullivan’s works are considered operettas, but in Britain they are usually referred to as “Savoy operas” or “comic operas.” Another term is “light opera.”
On the 25th of May in 1895, playwright, poet and novelist Oscar Wilde was convicted of “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons” and sentenced to serve two years in prison — becoming history’s most famous prosecutions for homosexual activity. It is perhaps worth noting that had Wilde not himself sued the Marquess of Queensberry, John Sholto Douglas, for criminal libel, and had not the Marquess demonstrated the truth of his offensive-to-Wilde statement, the prosecution would never have even commenced, and he would never have been sent to Reading Gaol.
The statement in question was Douglas’s note on a calling card: “For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite [sic].”
Five years after Wilde’s death in 1900, his Salomé was adapted as an opera, music composed by Richard Strauss. It was most definitely not any form of light opera.
In 1895 on May 25, the Republic of Formosa was formed, with Tang Jingsong as its president. It lasted less than half a year, dissolving upon conquest by Japan.