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Patience (operetta) facts for kids

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Patience
Lrussellpatience.jpg
Lillian Russell as Patience in 1882
Written by W. S. Gilbert (words)
Arthur Sullivan (music)
Characters Patience
Bunthorne
Lady Jane
Grosvenor
Date of premiere 23 April 1881
Place of premiere Opera Comique
London, England
Original language English
Subject Aesthetic Movement
Genre Operetta
Setting England in the late 19th century

Patience; or, Bunthorne's Bride is a two-act operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan. It was first performed at the Opera Comique in London, on 23 April 1881. On 10 October 1881, it moved to the Savoy Opera, a new theatre built especially for the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. It was the first theatre to be lit entirely by electricity.

Patience was the sixth of the fourteen operettas written by Gilbert and Sullivan. It ran for 578 performances. The operetta is a satire on the mores and extravangas of the aesthetic poets of the 1870s and 1880s. Patience was a great success.

Gilbert originally planned to use his Bab ballad, "The Rival Curates", as the basis for Patience, but had second thoughts about two clergymen in a comedy and turned to the poets of the aesthetic movement instead. D'Oyly Carte sent Oscar Wilde on a lecture tour in the United States to prepare Americans for the background of the operetta.

  • Brahms, Caryl. 1975. Gilbert and Sullivan: lost chords and discords. Little, Brown. pp. 97-108.

Images for kids

  • 1881 Patience

    1881 Programme for Patience

  • Design for an Aesthetic theatrical poster

    Many Punch cartoons satirised æsthetes. Both Patience and The Colonel are mentioned here. A tiny, pennant-waving Gilbert peeks out of Sullivan's backpack at lower right.

  • George Grossmith as Bunthorne, 1881 (second version)

    George Grossmith as Bunthorne

  • Sydney Granville Grosvenor

    Sydney Granville as Grosvenor

  • Frith A Private View detail

    Aesthetic dress (left and right) contrasted with 'fashionable attire' (centre), 1881

  • Rapturous Maidens, 1919 Patience, Gilbert Sullivan

    "Rapturous maidens" await Bunthorne

  • Passmore and Lytton as Bunthorne and Grosvenor 1900 Patience opera

    Passmore as Bunthorne "curses" Lytton as Grosvenor

  • BarnettasJn

    Alice Barnett as Lady Jane

  • Patience Bunthorne and Jane

    "...and here we are!" (left to right: Dow, Workman and René, 1907)

  • Lady Jane and Bunthorne

    "...sing 'boo' to you" (Lytton and Lewis, 1919)

  • Lrussellpatience

    Lillian Russell as Patience at the Bijou Opera House in New York, 1882

  • Patience GilbertSullivan programme 1885

    Illustration from an 1885 programme

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