"PATIENCE" AGAIN

Radio Record, Volume VII, Issue 46, 24 May 1935, Page 3

"PATIENCE" AGAIN

-_-_-_- Welcome Revival Twice Featured This Week , IN the ‘eighties of Good Queen Victoria’s reign there came a sudden realisation that there was nothing so horrid or so divorced.from the beautiful in life as the furniture, the decorations and the dress now called "Vietorian.". , , A school of aesthetic thought arose, and its followers, like all reformers, carried the cult to the extreme, with results that have done.more. to give

the Victorian era a bad name artistically than the antimacassars and wax fruit of our grandparents’ day, In the opera "Patience," Gilbert hits out at the extremists of aestheticism. This work was described more than 50 years ago as "An entirely new and original aesthetic opera." It was first produced at the Opera Comique, London, on April 23, 1881. The day was a Saturday, and, as the saying goes, "Saturday’s child works hard for its living.’ In the case of "Patience" this was fully borne out, because ‘the opera ran continuously for nearly two years nightly in ‘the same theatre. The title calls to mind an inquiry that was made by a lady from a rather crusty old man :- "I wonder what has become of the

fine: old Christian names like Patience and Prudence?’ asked the lady. "Oh, I don’t know," replied the livery old gentleman, "If.I had two daughters to christen nowadays, I would call one Hysteria and the other lxtravagance," "Patience"? was heard in a -most acceptable casting in the radio revivil at stations 1YX, 2YA, 8YL and 4YA on Sunday, May 19, and at 1YA, 2YC, 3YA and 4¥YO on Saturday, May 25, the programme will: be repeated.