This gifted comedian had invented, with the playwright and poet Badî' Khayrî, the laughable character of Kish Kish Bey, a rich provincial mayor squandering his fortune in Cairo with ill-reputed women... The apparition of social matters and the allusions to the political situation of colonial Egypt (the 1919 "revolution") were to boost the success of the trio's operettas, such as "al-'Ashara al-Tayyiba" (The Ten of Diamonds, 1920) a nationalistic adaptation of 'Blubeard". Sayyid also worked for Rihânî's rival troupe, 'Alî al-Kassâr's, and eventually collaborated with the Queen of Stages, singer and actress Munîra al-Mahdiyya (1884–1965), for whom he composed comic operettas such as "kullaha yawmayn" ("All of two days", 1920) and started an opera, "Cleopatra and Mark Anthony", which was to be played in 1927 with Muhammad 'Abd al-Wahhâb in the leading role. In the early twenties, all the companies sought his help. He decided to start his own company, acting at last on stage in a lead part. His two creations ("Shahrazâd' and "al-Barûka", 1921) weren't as successful as planned, and he was again forced to compose for other companies from 1922 until his premature death on 15 September 1923. Darwîsh's stage production is often clearly westernized: the traditional takht is replaced by a European ensemble, conducted by il Signore Casio, Darwish's maestro. Most of his operetta tunes use musical modes compatible with the piano, even if some vocal sections use other intervals, and the singing techniques employed in those compositions reveal a fascination for Italian opera, naively imitated in a cascade of oriental melismas. The light ditties of the comic plays are, from the modern point of view, much more interesting than the great opera-style arias. A number of those light melodies originally composed for al-Rihânî or al-Kassâr are now part of the Egyptian folklore. Such songs as "Salma ya Salâma", "Zurûni koll-e sana marra" or EI helwa di qâmet te'gen" are known by all Middle-Easterners and have been sung by modern singers, as the Lebanese Fayrûz or Syrian Sabâh Fakhrî, in reorchestrated versions.