By Lynn R. Mitchell
This week the Mary Baldwin College Theatre presents W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s opera, “Patience,” at the Fletcher Collins Theatre. Wikipedia describes “Patience” as:
… 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 satirizes romantic love, rural simplicity and military bluster.
First performed at the Opera Comique, London, on 23 April 1881, Patience moved to the 1,292-seat Savoy Theatre on 10 October 1881, where it was the first theatrical production in the world to be lit entirely by electric light. Henceforth, the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas would be known as the Savoy Operas, and both fans and performers of Gilbert and Sullivan would come to be known as “Savoyards.”
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.
Performances will be held on Wednesday – Saturday, November 18-21, at 7:30 p.m, and on Sunday, November 22, at 2:00 p.m.
For info on ticket information, call 540.887-7189, or go to the website.
LynnRMitchell.com 