Oscar, the opera in Philadelphia
The first time Oscar Wilde visited Philadelphia it was to promote an opera. That was during his lecture tour of America in 1882 when a required part of his visit was to act as the poster-boy for Gilbert & Sullivan’s latest comic opera Patience.
The purpose of Patience was to ridicule the adherents of the Aesthetic Movement. Not that it mattered to Oscar Wilde that he was the movement’s leading representative and the person most closely identified with the ridicule. He always knew he would outlive the mob mentality. It is an ironic measure of the wisdom of Wilde’s indifference that he has now triumphantly returned to Philadelphia as the subject of an opera himself.
The question is: if Oscar was indifferent to the opera Patience, would he have had any patience for Oscar the opera?
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