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Patience (opera)
1881 Programme for Patience Patience was the sixth operatic collaboration of fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan. It ran for a total of 578 performances, which was seven more than the authors' earlier work, H.M.S. Pinafore, and the second longest run of any work of musical theatre up to that time, after the operetta Les Cloches de Corneville.[2]
Background
One of many Punch cartoons about æsthetes that appeared after the première of Patience and The Colonel. Note the tiny, pennant-waving W. S. Gilbert at lower right. A popular myth holds that the central character, Bunthorne, a "Fleshly Poet," was intended to satirize Oscar Wilde. However, this identification is retrospective: in fact, the authors hired Wilde, after the fact, to popularize the opera in America (see below). There is a good case to be made that Bunthorne is based on the poets Algernon Swinburne and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who were considerably more famous than Wilde in 1881. Rossetti had been attacked for immorality by Robert Buchanan (under the pseudonym of Thomas Maitland) in an article called "The Fleshly School of Poetry", published in the Contemporary Review for October, 1871. Nonetheless, Wilde's biographer Richard Ellmann suggests that Wilde is a partial model for both Bunthorne and his rival Grosvenor. Wilde had recently been satirised by F. C. Burnand in his play The Colonel (February 1881), and he wrote to George Grossmith (who played the role of Bunthorne), having been informed that Bunthorne 'took him off', asking for tickets for the first night. 
George Grossmith as Bunthorne Gilbert and Sullivan's partner, the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte, was also the booking manager for Oscar Wilde. It was he who sent Wilde and his green carnation and knee-breeches to enlighten Americans on the English Aesthetic Movement and, incidentally, to build up the box office for Patience. Wilde even agreed to attend one of the early performances of Patience, with suitable publicity arranged by Helen Lenoir, who would become the second Mrs. D'Oyly Carte. Gilbert originally conceived Patience as a tale of rivalry between two curates and of the doting ladies who attended upon them. The plot and even some of the dialogue was lifted straight out of Gilbert's Bab Ballad "The Rival Curates." During the course of writing the libretto, however, Gilbert took note of the criticism he had received for his very mild satirizing of a clergyman in The Sorcerer, and looked about for an alternative pair of rivals. The aesthetes proved to be a gift to topsy-turvydom. Some remnants of the Bab Ballad version do survive in the final text of Patience. Lady Jane advises Bunthorne to tell Grosvenor: "Your style is much too sanctified—your cut is too canonical!" Later, Grosvenor agrees to change his lifestyle by saying, "I do it on compulsion!"—the very words used by the Reverend Hopley Porter in the Bab Ballad. Roles
Aesthetic dress (left and right) contrasted with 'fashionable attire' (center), 1881
Synopsis
"Rapturous maidens" await Bunthorne 
Sydney Granville as Grosvenor 
Alice Barnett as Lady Jane Bunthorne, heartbroken by Patience's rejection, has chosen to raffle himself off among his lady followers ("Let the merry cymbals sound"), the proceeds going to charity. The Dragoons interrupt the proceedings, and, led by the Duke, attempt to reason with the ladies ("Your maiden hearts, ah, do not steel"), but the ladies are too busy clamouring for tickets to the raffle to listen ("Come walk up"). Just as Bunthorne is handing the bag to the unattractive Jane, ready for the worst, Patience interrupts the proceedings and proposes to unselfishly sacrifice herself by loving the poet ("True Love must single-hearted be"). A delighted Bunthorne accepts immediately, and his followers, their idol lost, return to the Dragoons to whom they are engaged ("I hear the soft note of the echoing voice"). All seems resolved, when Grosvenor enters and the ladies, finding him poetic, aesthetic, and far more attractive than Bunthorne, become his partisans instead ("Oh, list while we a love confess"), much to the dismay of the Dragoons, Patience, Bunthorne and especially Grosvenor himself. Act II Lady Jane, accompanying herself on the cello, laments the passing of the years and expresses her hope that Bunthorne will "secure" her before it is too late ("Silvered is the raven hair"). Meanwhile, Grosvenor wearily entertains the ladies ("A magnet hung in a hardware shop") and begs to be given a half-holiday from their cloying attentions. The Dragoons' Major, Colonel, and Duke attempt to earn their partners' love through making an effort to convert to the principles of aestheticism ("It's clear that mediaeval art"). Then, Patience confesses her affection for Grosvenor to Bunthorne, who is naturally furious at the revelation.Confronting Grosvenor, Bunthorne threatens him with a dire curse unless he undertakes to become a perfectly ordinary young man. Grosvenor, intimidated, but also pleased at the excuse to escape the celebrity caused by his "fatal beauty" agrees to do so. This plot backfires, however, when Grosvenor reappears as an ordinary man; all of the ladies follow him into ordinariness, becoming "matter-of-fact young girls." Patience realizes that Grosvenor has lost his perfection in her eyes – and therefore, it will not be so selfish for her to marry him, which she undertakes to do without delay. The ladies, following suit, return to their old fiancés among the Dragoons. In the spirit of fairness, the Duke chooses the "plain" Lady Jane as his bride, for her very lack of appeal. Bunthorne is left to the "vegetable" love that he has claimed (falsely) to desire most of all. Thus, echoing the subtitle of the piece, everyone sings that "Nobody [is] 'Bunthorne's bride.'" Musical numbers
"...and here we are!" 
Lytton and Lewis: "Sing 'Hey' to you!"
1 This was originally followed by a song for the Duke, "Though men of rank may useless seem." The orchestration survives in Sullivan's autograph score, but without a vocal line. There have been several attempts at a reconstruction, including one by David Russell Hulme that was included on the 1994 new D'Oyly Carte Opera Company recording.
Production history
Lillian Russell as Patience at the Bijou Opera House in New York, 1882 In the British provinces, Patience played — either by itself, or in repertory — continuously from summer 1880 to 1885, then again in 1888. It rejoined the touring repertory in 1892 and was included in every season until 1955–56. New costumes were designed in 1918 by Hugo Rumbold, and a new production debuted on January 28 1957. The opera returned to its regular place in the repertory, apart from a break in 1962–63. Late in the company's history, it toured a reduced set of operas to reduce costs. Patience had its final D'Oyly Carte performances in April 1979 and was left out of the company's last three seasons of touring. In America, Richard D'Oyly Carte mounted a production at the Standard Theatre in September 1881, six months after the London premiere. Unlike H.M.S. Pinafore, there were no "pirated" productions before the official version opened, although there were several afterwards, including one starring Lillian Russell.[6] In Australia, its first authorized performance was on 26 November 1881 at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, produced by J. C. Williamson. Patience entered the repertory of the English National Opera in 1969, in an acclaimed production with Derek Hammond-Stroud as Bunthorne. The production was later mounted in Australia and was preserved on video as part of the Brent Walker series. In 1984, ENO also took the production on tour to the Metropolitan Opera House, in New York City. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a great Gilbert and Sullivan fan, undertook the silent role of Mr. Bunthorne's Solicitor (who oversees the raffle until scared off by the Dragoons) in a 1985 Washington Savoyards production of the piece.[7] The following table shows the history of the D'Oyly Carte productions in Gilbert's lifetime:
Historical castingThe following tables show the casts of the principal original productions and D'Oyly Carte Opera Company touring repertory at various times through to the company's 1982 closure: 
Jessie Bond as Lady Angela
Illustration from an 1885 programme RecordingsOf the recordings of this opera, the 1961 D'Oyly Carte Opera Company recording (with complete dialogue), has been the best received. Two videos, Brent Walker (1982) and Australian Opera (1995), are both based on the respected English National Opera production first seen in the 1970s.[8]
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