Gilbert and Sullivan
Patience at the Haverly’s Theater on 14th Street
[1882]
Lithographic poster by H.A. Thomas, New York, laid on linen
Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas enjoyed great popularity with American audiences even when, as withPatience, the humor was directed at British phenomena that few Americans could have encountered directly. To rectify this, the promoter of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas, Richard D’Oyly Carte, invited Oscar Wilde to make a lecture tour of the United States, thus allowing the American public to experience Aestheticism for themselves. Wilde arrived in New York in January 1882 and immediately attended a performance of Patience, where he confronted his comic double. His appearance would have been fresh in the memory of the New York public when this poster was struck a month later. It depicts the Colonel, the stout Lady Jane with her cello, the innocent heroine, Patience, and a scene in which a very Wildean Bunthorne “sits up with a lily all night,” perhaps the “sentimental passion of vegetable fashion” referred to in Bunthorne’s solo “If you’re anxiousto shine in the high aesthetic line.” Haverly’s production toured the United States from December 1881 to March 1882.
LENT BY THE IRVING S. GILMORE MUSIC LIBRARY, YALE UNIVERSITY
The Sidney Rose Collection of Gilbert and Sullivan, Box 10 (cont…)
Napoleon Sarony
Oscar Wilde
1882
Albumen Panel Print
LENT BY THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON
www.npg.org.uk