The obstinately long-lived popularity of Gilbert and Sullivan’s light operas has often been called a symptom of our nostalgia for things Victorian—and so Ian Bradley calls it in his massive new compilation. We crave, it is claimed, a simpler age: a time of innocence (for which read “asexuality” and “fun poked at slant-eyed foreigners”). All I can say is God help the historian who looks to H.M.S. Pinafore or The Mikado for precise reflections of their times. Gilbert, the deviser of plots for the Savoy operas, habitually viewed his times in a distorting mirror as grotesque as Lewis Carroll’s vision of Wonderland. Exaggerating the absurdities of Victorian Britain, he rendered them curiouser and curiouser.

And so Patience creates a far more precious and affected aesthetic...

 

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