About the work
"Aesthetic" comic opera in two acts by Arthur Sullivan and William Schwenck Gilbert, first performed on 23 April 1881 at the Opera Comique in London and, from 10 October 1881, continued at the newly opened Savoy Theatre – the first theatre lit by electricity. Gilbert reworked an initially planned satire on rival clergymen into a parody of the aesthetic movement.
Plot
A troupe of lovesick young women worship the affected poet Reginald Bunthorne, while the simple milkmaid Patience cares nothing for poetry. When Bunthorne's rival, the equally aesthetic-posing Archibald Grosvenor, appears, the women's adoration shifts to him. In the end both poets' aestheticism is exposed as pose, and the couples are newly paired off.
Cultural significance
Running for 578 performances, the work satirised figures of the Aesthetic Movement such as Oscar Wilde, James McNeill Whistler and Algernon Swinburne, and is regarded as one of the sharpest contemporary stage satires of Victorian London's art scene.