Overview

"Patience or Bunthorne's Bride" 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 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."