“Though everywhere true love I see
A-coming to all, but not to me,
I cannot tell what this love may be!
For I am blithe and I am gay,
While they sit sighing night and day.
Think of the gulf ’twixt them and me,
‘Fal la la la!’ and ‘Miserie’!”
Patience
Patience, or Bunthorne’s Bride
Spring 2012
The Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company is pleased to announce that it will present Patience, for four weekends, from March 9th through April 1st of 2012. Friday and Saturday performances are at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday matinees are at 2:00 p.m. (except for Sunday, March 11, which is at 1:00). For a more detailed performance calendar, visit our Tickets page.
The performances will be at the Howard Conn Fine Arts Center, at Plymouth Congregational Church, located at 1900 Nicollet Avenue South, in Minneapolis.
This production of Patience will be directed by:
Bob Neu, Stage Director: Photo and Biography
Marina Liadova, Music Director: Photo and Biography
The cast for this production of Patience includes:
| Reginald Bunthorne | Michael Burton |
| Archibald Grosvenor | Peter Middlecamp |
| Colonel Calverley | Bill Marshall |
| Major Murgatroyd | Waldyn Benbenek |
| Lieutenant, The Duke of Dunstable | Jim Ahrens |
| Mr. Bunthorne’s Solicitor | Tom Berg |
| Patience | Sarah Wind Richens |
| The Lady Angela | Julia Knoll |
| The Lady Saphir | Beth King |
| The Lady Ella | Ashley Stockwell |
| The Lady Jane | Sarah Gibson |
| Chorus of Rapturous Maidens | |
| Christine Anderson | Mary Mescher Benbenek |
| Cory Bianco | Kristen Bond |
| Willow Bousu | Mary Gregory |
| Ruthanne Heyward | Shawn Holt |
| Holly MacDonald | Kara Schrapp |
| Rhea Sullivan | Amanda Weis |
| Holly Windle | |
| Chorus of Officers of Dragoon Guards | |
| Kurt Bender | Tom Berg |
| Jim Brooks | James Ehlenz |
| L. Peter Erickson | Clyde Gerber |
| Stephen Hage | Dean Laurance |
| John Orbison | Wendell Peck |
| Richard Rames | Anthony Rohr |
| Aaron Rolloff | |
Patience opens with all the well-born young ladies in the local village, rapturously caught up in aestheticism, and in love with two aesthetic poets. The poets, however, are both in love with Patience, the simple village milkmaid, who cares nothing for poetry. Patience learns that true love must be completely unselfish … it must wither and sting and burn! The young ladies’ military suitors don’t see the point to aestheticism, 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 satirizes the “aesthetic craze” of the 1870s and ’80s, when the output of poets, composers, painters and designers of all kinds was indeed prolific, but, some argued, empty and self-indulgent. This artistic movement was so popular, and also so easy to ridicule as a meaningless fad, that it made Patience a big hit in its day. The operetta remains relevant as it can be understood to satirize the adherents to any and all fads!
Two excellent internet resources for information about Patience:
The Gilbert & Sullivan Archive – Patience
Poster Illustration: The Bower Meadow, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1871-72
Poster design by Tom McGregor and Mary Olson
“Well, it seems to me to be nonsense.”
“Nonsense, yes, perhaps, but oh, what precious nonsense!”
Patience