 The opera also includes and parodies elements of melodrama, popular at the Adelphi Theatre.There is a priggishly good-mannered poor-but-virtuous heroine, a villain who carries off the maiden, a hero in disguise and his faithful old retainer who dreams of their former glory days, the snake-in-the-grass sailor who claims to be following his heart, the wild, mad girl, the swagger of fire-eating patriotism, ghosts coming to life to enforce a family curse, and so forth.But Gilbert, in his customary topsy-turvy fashion, turns the moral absolutes of melodrama upside down