BBC Proms - 2009 - Prom 35: Patience - Part 1

From the Royal Albert Hall, London. Presented by Martin Handley. Charles Mackerras is an acknowledged expert in the music of Gilbert and Sullivan and he returns to the Proms to conduct a performance of the exuberant operetta Patience. Patience opened the famous Savoy Theatre in London in 1881 - the first theatre in the world to be lit by incandescent electric light - and it satirises the fad of the 1870s and 1880s known as the 'aesthetic craze', when poets, painters and composers were prolific but, some argued, empty and self-indulgent. It centres on Patience, the simple village milkmaid, who cares nothing for poetry. Gilbert and Sullivan: Patience (semi-staged) - Part 1 Patience ...... Rebecca Bottone (soprano) Lady Jane ...... Felicity Palmer (mezzo-soprano) Lady Angela ...... Pamela Helen Stephen (mezzo-soprano) Lady Ella ...... Elena Xanthoudakis (soprano) Lady Saphir ...... Sophie-Louise Dann (mezzo-soprano) Reginald Bunthorne ...... Simon Butteriss (baritone) Archibald Grosvenor ...... Toby Stafford-Allen (baritone) Colonel Calverley ...... Donald Maxwell (baritone) Major Murgatroyd ...... Graeme Danby (bass) Lt Duke of Dunstable ...... Bonaventura Bottone (tenor) Chorus of English National Opera BBC Concert Orchestra Charles Mackerras (conductor) Martin Duncan (director).