York Opera

Twenty (or thereabouts) love-sick maidens, all in love with ‘aesthetic’ poet Reginald Bunthorne; twenty (or thereabouts) officers of the Dragoon Guards, highly offended that their fiancées have all deserted them for a man who wears velveteen knickerbockers and carries a lily; Patience, the village milkmaid, a pretty but down-to-earth working girl, and... Oh, no! Not another velvet-clad poet!

The 1870s/80s craze for all things aesthetic may long have passed, but Gilbert’s satire on affectation is still as valid and as funny as it was 136 years ago, and Sullivan’s music is at its most tuneful and witty.