Gilbert & Sullivan - Patience / Hammond-Stroud, Fryatt, Collins, Opera World
by Dave Heather
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DVD details
Actor: Anne Collins, Derek Hammond-Stroud, Donald Adams, John Fryatt, Sandra DugdaleDirector: Dave Heather
Brand: Acorn
Producer: George Walker
Producer: Judith de Paul
Writer: William S. Gilbert
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Classical, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 116 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-10-22
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Acorn Media
DVD Reviews of Gilbert & Sullivan - Patience / Hammond-Stroud, Fryatt, Collins, Opera World
DVD Review: Not actually awful, but absolutely not the version to choose
Summary: 3 Stars
SOURCE: This "Patience" is one of the "complete" series of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas made by producer Brent Walker for the BBC in 1982-83. "Patience" was shot over a two-week schedule in 1983. Four G&S collaborations were omitted from the series. The score of their first work, "Thespis," has been lost. The last two collaborations, "Utopia Ltd" and "The Grand Duke" were then still regarded as failures and not worth the cost and bother of mounting them. The other collaboration was "The Martyr of Antioch," a perfectly serious, even ponderous oratorio that was much admired by the Victorians, but for all intents and purposes forgotten since then.
SOUND: Minimally acceptable stereo of somewhat limited dynamic range.
CAST: Patience, a village milkmaid - Sandra Dugdale (soprano); Reginald Bunthorne, a fleshly poet - Derek Hammond-Stroud (baritone); Archibald Grosvenor, poet and apostle of simplicity - John Fryatt (baritone); Colonel Calverley, of the 35th Dragoon Guards - Donald Adams (bass-baritone); Major Murgatroyd - Roderick Kennedy (baritone); Lieutenant, the Duke of Dunstable - Terry Jenkins (tenor); Lady Angela - Shirley Chapman (soprano); Lady Jane - Anne Collins (contralto); Lady Saphir - Shelagh Squires (mezzo-soprano); Lady Ella - Patricia Hay (soprano).
CONDUCTOR: Alexander Faris with the Ambrosian Opera Chorus and the London Symphony Orchestra.
COMMENTARY: This 1983 British television version of "Patience" is in head-to-head competition with the 1995 version from the Australian Opera. It loses, and the match isn't even close.
Both productions are based on the 1967 production of the English National Opera, sharing costume designs and many bits of stage business alike. The ENO production was traditional, sumptuous and successful--both in the UK and across the Atlantic in New York and elsewhere. It is a pity that no one filmed that version.
The Australian Opera version begins with an enormous advantage. It is a live performance before a large and appreciative audience. Gilbert and Sullivan were creatures of the live stage. Their creations thrive there, and there only. The English version, produced by Brent Walker, impaled on a sound stage and separated from any real audience, positively withers.
The AO Chorus, for example, consists of real singers who are obviously working at their singing. Brent Walker used the Ambrosian Chorus to pre-record their material. The photogenic on-stage choruses in his productions are pretty evidently ringers, that is, they are lithe and mobile dancers pretending to be singing. In opera, even in G&S comic opera, there are exceptions, of course, but it is a reliable rule of thumb to assume that singers don't dance very well and dancers sing even worse.
The Brent Walker productions also suffer from being lumbered with introductions and comments from Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Dreadful stuff! Absolutely mind-numbing.
In one respect only is the Brent Walker "Patience" superior to its AO counterpart: the part of Colonel Calverley is played by Donald Adams. Adams was a fixture and star of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company (the production company founded by Gilbert, Sullivan and their producer Richard D'Oyly Carte) during its last days of glory before being shut down by the penny-pinching Thatcher government. His AO counterpart, John Germain, while perfectly adequate, is not in the same league.
It is with the casting of the rival poets, Bunthorne and Grosvenor, that the balance tips irretrievably in favor of the Australian Opera. The AO's Dennis Olsen and Anthony Warlow are a brilliant pair of singing and dancing actors. Brent Walker's Hammond-Stroud and Fryatt are simply superannuated. Considering that the play centers upon youthful stardom and adoring groupies, the casting of those two far-from-young men is inexplicable.
If this "Patience" were the only choice, I would say the quality of the words and music outweighs the problem with the cast. But there is a rival, so I say forget this one and snap up the Australian Opera version.
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Description of Gilbert & Sullivan - Patience / Hammond-Stroud, Fryatt, Collins, Opera World
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