Sullivan had a brilliant career as a student.
He was the first to win the Mendelssohn Scholarship, then the premier musical scholastic honour for a young British musician. It was while studying at Leipzig, under the terms of this award, that he wrote, as a youth of nineteen, the incidental music to Shakespeare's Tempest, one of the songs from which we are to hear.
Where the Bee Sucks is sung by Ariel, who has been made supremely happy by Prospero's promise 'Thou shalt ere long be free.' The airy spirit sings: 'Merrily, merrily shall I live now, under the blossom that hangs on the bough.'