Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Gilbert & Sullivan: Patience

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

This is the summer Sunday I usually reserve for a recording of one of those classic English Victorian comic operas. This time around you get G & S with all of Gilbert's witty dialog, so this is a truly complete recorded presentation of something from the G & S canon.

Patience (1881) is a musical satire on the Victorian Aesthetic movement of artists and writers which included Oscar Wilde. Every generation has its share of artsy poseurs. Twenty-first century listeners ought to recognize modern counterparts to the two pretentious poets, Reginald Bunthorne and Archibald Grosvenor.

Patience goes out to you in the 1986 CD reissue of a vintage recording originally issued on Decca/London stereo LPs in 1961 with the renowned D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Isidore Godfrey conducted the D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus and New Symphony Orchestra of London. Professional performers of the G & S canon are often referred to as Savoyards, after the Savoy Theatre in London, impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte's opera house, where so many of the immortal British operettas were first performed. Patience was the first of them to be produced there in the company's new home. Patience is a personal favorite of mine that I've programmed four times before over four decades of doing this show. I last broadcast it on Sunday, July 28, 2013.