Patience

Rousing performance by Australian Opera of the gentle G&S satire on the Oscar Wilde-ish cult of aesthetics

Performers
Colonel Calverley : John Germain
Major Murgatroyd : Neil Kirkby
Duke of Dunstable : Graeme Ewer
Reginald Bunthorne : Dennis Olsen
Archibald Grosvenor : Anthony Warlow
Lady Angela : Jennifer Bermingham
Lady Saphir : Roxane Hislop
Lady Ella : Toni Powell
Lady Jane : Heather Begg
Patience : Christine Douglas
The Australian Opera Chorus

Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra
David Stanhope (conductor)

Stage director
John Cox

This rousing, traditional performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's comic operetta was recorded live at the Sydney Opera House on 28 Feb 1995. Australian Opera's production, directed by John Cox, was based on Cox's well-known English National Opera staging.

Gilbert & Sullivan's parodistic operetta opened on 23 Apr 1881 at the Opera Comique, London, and ran for 578 performances at both the Opera Comique and Savoy Theatres. It pokes fun at the fashion of the time for 'aesthetics' - the kind of values associated with that ultimate aesthete, Oscar Wilde. The character of Bunthorne was not originally intended to be a parody of Wilde - he was made up to look like the painter Whistler - though the Irish wit is the association most commonly made with the character these days.

The county dames are in love with two poets while the poets are both in love with Patience, the village milkmaid. The brigade men don't see the point to all this aesthetics nonsense, but decide they had better give it a try to win the women's love.