Patience; or, Bunthorne's Bride, is a comic opera in two acts with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera is a satire on the aesthetic movement of the 1870s and '80s in England and, more broadly, on fads, superficiality, vanity, hypocrisy and pretentiousness; it also satirises romantic love, rural simplicity and ...

Patience learns that true love must be completely unselfish--it must wither and sting and burn! The girls' military suitors don't see the point to aesthetics, but they decide to give it a try to win the women's hearts. It is touch and go for awhile, but everyone ends up with a suitable partner, even if it is only a tulip or lily.

Patience is in some ways a paradox. It is at once both inextricably bound to the period in which it was written, yet timeless with its themes of hero worship and irrational popular fads. The operetta parodies the peculiar “Aesthetic” movement, which swept England (and to some extent the U.S.) in the late 1800s.

Olivia Boyd (U/S Lady Angela) is excited to be performing in her seventh Gilbert & Sullivan production in her sixth year with Madison Savoyards. She currently works as an ofice assistant and lives in the beautiful town of Middleton.

One of Gilbert & Sullivan’s most successful shows, Patience is a rollicking satire that pits the straight-laced ideals of the Victorian era against the passions and indulgences of the 1870s …

Suddenly Patience rushes in and declares that she will marry Bunthorne—since love must be unselfish, and since she would indeed be sacrificing her own feelings by marrying him.

Patience or Bunthorne’s Bride is the sixth of Gilbert and Sullivan’s fourteen comic operas. It was first performed at the Opera Comique in London on April 23, 1881. The phenomenon known as the “Aesthetic Movement” was in full swing when this opera was written. Aestheticism was a Victorian fad, a reaction against the art of the day.

In early drafts of Patience, Gilbert had originally planned for the operetta to be about two rival clergymen vying for the attention of the ladies of the parish, based on his humorous poem, “The Rival Curates.” In those early drafts, the soldiers’ entrance number was a two verse song: They fight the foe together. The enemy of all is!

All the village lasses except the milkmaid Patience worship the pretentious poet Reginald Bunthorne (modeled after Oscar Wilde). She sets her heart on her childhood sweetheart—the handsome Archibald Grosvenor. But to love such a perfect creature is selfish, she reasons, so she turns her attentions to the boring Bunthorne.

Patience was the sixth operatic collaboration of fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan. The opera is a satire on the aesthetic movement of the 1870s and '80s in England, part of the 19th century European movement that emphasised aesthetic values over moral or social themes in literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design.