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Patience

Patience (1881) satirised the aesthetic movement in general and its colourful poets in particular, combining aspects of A. C. Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Oscar Wilde, James McNeill Whistler and others in the rival poets Bunthorne and Grosvenor. Grossmith, who created the role of Bunthorne, based his makeup, wig and costume on Swinburne and especially Whistler, as seen in the adjacent photograph. The work also lampoons male vanity and chauvinism in the military. The story concerns two rival aesthetic poets, who attract the attention of the young ladies of the village, formerly engaged to the members of a cavalry regiment. But both poets are in love with Patience, the village milkmaid, who detests one of them and feels that it is her duty to avoid the other despite her love for him. Richard D'Oyly Carte was the booking manager for Oscar Wilde, a then lesser-known proponent of aestheticism, and dispatched him on an American lecture tour in conjunction with the opera's U.S. run, so that American audiences might better understand what the satire was all about.

During the run of Patience, Carte built the large, modern Savoy Theatre, which became the partnership's permanent home. It was the first theatre (and the world's first public building) to be lit entirely by electric lighting. Patience moved into the Savoy after six months at the Opera Comique and ran for a total of 578 performances, surpassing the run of H.M.S. Pinafore.