At the end of each summer I find myself thinking that maybe I have enjoyed enough Gilbert and Sullivan shows, but then by February I am craving a fix! So, it's always good news when the new season opens with a performance by MUGSS - Manchester Universities Gilbert and Sullivan Society! The start of the G&S season is akin to the start of Spring!
This year's performance was Patience, an opera which is performed infrequently but has some of the best music of all the works and, possibly, the most fully formed satire of all Gilbert's works. In Patience Gilbert pokes fun at the 'aesthetics' or the Pre-Raphaelites. There are poets in abundance, adoring maidens and much dreadful doggerel. There is also Patience, an naive milkmaid, who doesn't understand what all the fuss is about! It's wonderful!
The songs are also some of Gilbert and Sullivan's best and Bernie and I always comment on this whenever we see the opera. So, we were humming along to "twenty love-sick maidens we", "when I first put this uniform on" and "a magnet hung in a hardware shop". And generally having a very good time! Hurrah for Gilbert and Sullivan.