Tonight I am watching Opera Australia's taping of Gilbert & Sullivan's Patience - a comic operetta that satirises the Victorian cult of aestheticism which was popular in the 1880s. Aestheticism was a pretty easy fad to make fun of - men who go about in velvet and flowers, reading bad poetry, wearing their hair long and leaning against the scenery usually are.
Interesting facts about Patience:
It was the first theatrical production in the world to be lit entirely by electric light.
Because the aesthetic movement was not popular or even well-known in America, Gilbert and Sullivan hired Oscar Wilde (who epitomised the movement with his foppish fashion sense and effeminate wittiness) to do a lecturing tour in the states before they imported Patience - just so Americans could appreciate exactly what Patience was satirising. Another interesting thing: until Oscar Wilde was notoriously sent to jail for homosexual behaviour, foppishness and effeminate behaviour were hated by 'manly men', not because they made the effeminate men look gay, but because the aesthes attracted all the women. Of course, after Oscar Wilde 'came out' or was forced to, everybody associated his trademark aesthetic behaviour with homosexuality.
Just so's you know (this clip won't make much sense if you don't!) Anthony Warlow is playing a young aesthete, Archibald, who has been compelled by his rival in foppishness, Bunthorne, to give up the posturing and poetry and start acting like a normal Victorian young man, so that all the girls will start chasing Bunthorne instead. Hilarious and clever.
