Patience: why all the satire?

Bunthorne and Grosvenor in a 1900 performance of Patience at the D'Oyly Carte

VLOC's upcoming performance of Patience this June will be a classic Gilbert & Sullivan production, and the Victorian pomp and wit will shine in all its glory! One feature for which Patience is so famous is it's varied and hilarious satire. Poking fun at politics? Check. The military? Check. Poets? Yep, that too.

Ok, poetry is a little different than politics and the military. So why do Gilbert and Sullivan poke fun at something as seemingly non-controversial as poets?

The answer lies in a cultural movement taking place in England at the time - the Aesthetic Movement. Apparently, a number of artists at the time had grown rather tired of the "rules" that the norms of the Victorian Era had imposed on both art and life. These "aesthetes" decided beauty in art was of the utmost importance, and the accepted cultural norms (or even practicalities) that demanded conformity and respectability were artistically limiting and should be cast aside to let art reach the highest level of beauty possible.

Some aesthetes took this "art for art's sake" notion very seriously, even to the point of walking, talking, and moving in ways very strange to Victorian England. Many had devoted fans, but there were plenty of people that called out the aesthetes for being shallow and fake. 

So this Aesthetic Movement, along with the backlash against it, was all the rage at the time that Gilbert and Sullivan composed Patience, and they took full advantage of the situation to make an operatic hit. Of course, they wove in biting satire about plenty of other topics - politics (which is an easy target), love, rural life, etc. But the satiric icing on the cake of this opera is certainly their ingenious stabs at the Aesthetic Movement and all it entailed, which is brought to life in Patience through the rivalry between two sham poets. 

Don't miss all the wit and the laughs that this opera brings! Patience shows in June at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Theatre, and you can buy your tickets now! Call the box office at 240-314-8690 or buy online HERE.

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