Patience (2003)

Patience, or Bunthorne's Bride, is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. First performed at the Opera Comique, London, on April 23, 1881, it moved to the 1,292-seat Savoy Theatre on October 10, 1881, where it was the first theatrical production in the world to be lit entirely by electric light. Henceforth, the G&S comic operas would be known as the Savoy Operas, and both fans and performers of G&S 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.

Patience (or, Bunthornes Bride)

Dramatis Personae

Colonel Calverley		Officers of		Chris Sinclair
Major Murgatroyd		Dragoon		Glen Lee
Lieut, The Duke of Dunstable		Guards		John Parry

Reginald Bunthorne		A fleshy poet		Paul Anderson
Archibald Grosvenor		An Idylic Poet		Philip King
Mr Bunthorne's Solicitor				Gerald Hartley

The Lady Jane				Patricia Robins
The Lady Ella		Rapturous		Elaine Foster
The Lady Angela		Maidens		Elaine Moore
The Lady Saphir				Nina Lloyd-Hirst

Patience		A Dairy Maid		Jane Foster or Louisa Mould

Ladies of the Chorus (More Rapturous Maidens)

Joanna Blanchard	Ann Griffith		Laurine Kay		Ann Storey
Wendy Buxton	Maggie Hicks		Louisa Mould		Sue Sutton
Joyce Cook	Mollie Hodkinson		Anna McPhee		Sonia Welford
Jane Foster	Pat Jones		Marlene Pinchbeck

Gentlemen of the Chorus (Dragoon Guards)

Mike Austin	John Bundy		Ewen Lewis		Peter Martin