London at the End of the Century:A Book of Gossip
a Beckett, Arthur William
1900
PLAYHOUSES, OLD AND NEW.
Looking at the list of theatres at the end of the century it is instructive to note that most of the senior playhouses have retained the speciality of fifty years ago. The Lyceum is still the home of romantic drama, Drury Lane and the Adelphi of melodrama, the St. James and the Haymarket of comedy. The merry little Strand with its memories of and Burnand, and, earlier still, of Talford and Albert Smith, is rather uncertain in the tone of its entertainment. Of the new theatres three or four are given over to the charms of what of old was known as the burletta. It is strange that with so many | |
34 | musical pieces going in all directions a national opera cannot be established. But so it is. Professor Stanford has recently appealed to the public and the County Council to subsidise such an institution, but hitherto without success. The days of Pyne and Harrison are over, and Carl Rosa is becoming a memory of the past. |
survives as the solitary opera house. The home of music where made her London debut, and Sims Reeves sang in English, no longer exists. Her Majesty's is now a theatre, not an opera house. On the 24th of May, , however, the on her eightieth birthday heard the national anthem sung on the site of the boards where Piccolomini warbled the death melodies of I believe I may take the credit of filling the theatre, on the occasion to which I refer, with the children of the State. The scholars of the Duke of York's School and the Greenwich Hospital School were there, with many others. At half-past two o'clock the children wished their many happy returns of the day, and Her Majesty listened to the greeting at Windsor. The telephone carried the voices from the theatre to the Castle. I believe that it was the first time that a monarch had listened to an address from her subjects at a distance of forty miles. | |
