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Cardiff Empire
The Cardiff Empire Theatre was a theatre, later converted to a cinema, located in the city of Cardiff, Wales. The theatre was originally built in 1887 by Dolph Levino before it was rebuilt in 1896 by the renowned theatre architect Frank Matcham. The new building suffered an extensive fire in 1899 and was rebuilt again by the following year. Rebuilt as a cinema in 1937, it closed in 1961 and was subsequently demolished in 1962. History Original theatre On 9 April 1887, Professor Dolph Levino opened Levino's Hall at the site. Levino had previously operated a circus act in nearby Westgate Street which had enjoyed a ten-week run in the city the previous year. Levino himself performed a mesmerism act. He had acquired the site in November 1896 and the hall was built by Fred Martin, who presented Levino with a marble clock upon the hall's opening. Martin later filed for bankruptcy and cited the Hall as a major factor, alleging he lost £3,000 in the venture. The site could accommodate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Queen Street, Cardiff
Cardiff city centre ( cy, Canol Dinas Caerdydd) is the city centre and central business district of Cardiff, Wales. The area is tightly bound by the River Taff to the west, the Civic Centre to the north and railway lines and two railway stations – Central and Queen Street – to the south and east respectively. Cardiff became a city in 1905. The city centre in Cardiff consists of principal shopping streets: Queen Street, St. Mary's Street and the Hayes, as well as large shopping centres, and numerous arcades and lanes that house some smaller, specialized shops and boutiques. The city centre has undergone a number of redevelopment projects, including St. David's 2, which extended the shopping district southwards, creating 100 new stores and a flagship John Lewis, the only branch in Wales and the largest outside London. Compared to nearby cities, the new St David's Centre has more retail space than the whole of Newport or Swansea. In 2008–9, the annual fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cardiff
Cardiff (; cy, Caerdydd ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Dinas a Sir Caerdydd, links=no), and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingdom. Located in the south-east of Wales and in the Cardiff Capital Region, Cardiff is the county town of the historic county of Glamorgan and in 1974–1996 of South Glamorgan. It belongs to the Eurocities network of the largest European cities. A small town until the early 19th century, its prominence as a port for coal when mining began in the region helped its expansion. In 1905, it was ranked as a city and in 1955 proclaimed capital of Wales. Cardiff Built-up Area covers a larger area outside the county boundary, including the towns of Dinas Powys and Penarth. Cardiff is the main commercial centre of Wales as well as the base for the Senedd. At the 2021 census, the unitary authority area population was put at 362,400. The popula ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Matcham
Francis Matcham (22 November 1854 – 17 May 1920)Mackintosh, Iain"Matcham, Frank" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, accessed 7 July 2019 was an English architect who specialised in the design of theatres and music halls. He worked extensively in London, predominantly under Moss Empires, for whom he designed the Hippodrome, London, Hippodrome in 1900, Hackney Empire (1901), London Coliseum, Coliseum (1903) and London Palladium, Palladium (1910). His last major commission before retirement was the Victoria Palace Theatre, Victoria Palace (1911) for the variety magnate Alfred Butt. During his 40-year career, Matcham was responsible for the design and construction of over 90 theatres and the redesign and refurbishment of a further 80 throughout the United Kingdom. Matcham was born in Newton Abbot, Devon, where he became apprenticed at the age of 14 to the architect George Soudon Bridgman. Matcham moved to London, aged 21, where he j ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Animal Magnetism
Animal magnetism, also known as mesmerism, was a protoscientific theory developed by German doctor Franz Mesmer in the 18th century in relation to what he claimed to be an invisible natural force (''Lebensmagnetismus'') possessed by all living things, including humans, animals, and vegetables. He claimed that the force could have physical effects, including healing. He tried persistently, without success, to achieve a wider scientific recognition of his ideas.Wolfart, Karl Christian; Friedrich Anton Mesmer. ''Mesmerismus: Oder, System der Wechselwirkungen, Theorie und Anwendung des thierischen Magnetismus als die allgemeine Heilkunde zur Erhaltung des Menschen'' (in German, facsimile of the 1811 edition). Cambridge University Press, 2011. . Foreword. The vitalist theory attracted numerous followers in Europe and the United States and was popular into the 19th century. Practitioners were often known as magnetizers rather than mesmerists. It had an important influence in medici ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proscenium
A proscenium ( grc-gre, προσκήνιον, ) is the metaphorical vertical plane of space in a theatre, usually surrounded on the top and sides by a physical proscenium arch (whether or not truly "arched") and on the bottom by the stage floor itself, which serves as the frame into which the audience observes from a more or less unified angle the events taking place upon the stage during a theatrical performance. The concept of the fourth wall of the theatre stage space that faces the audience is essentially the same. It can be considered as a social construct which divides the actors and their stage-world from the audience which has come to witness it. But since the curtain usually comes down just behind the proscenium arch, it has a physical reality when the curtain is down, hiding the stage from view. The same plane also includes the drop, in traditional theatres of modern times, from the stage level to the "stalls" level of the audience, which was the original meaning of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oswald Stoll
Sir Oswald Stoll (20 January 1866 – 9 January 1942) was an Australian-born British theatre manager and the co-founder of the Stoll Moss Group theatre company. He also owned Cricklewood Studios and film production company Stoll Pictures, which was one of the leading British studios of the Silent era.Patricia Warren ''British Film Studios: An Illustrated History'', London: B.T. Batsford, 2001, p.22 In 1912, he founded the Royal Variety Performance (originally Royal Command Performance) a now-annual charity show which benefits the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund. Biography Early life Born in Melbourne, Australia as Oswald Gray, he moved to England with his mother, Adelaide McConnell Gray after the death of his father James Oswald Gray. When his mother remarried, he took his stepfather's last name, Stoll. Entertainment career Theatre management At a young age, Stoll left school to help his mother, Adelaide, manage first the Parthenon music hall in Liverpool, and lat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Empire Palace, Cardiff
An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) exercises political control over the peripheries. Within an empire, there is non-equivalence between different populations who have different sets of rights and are governed differently. Narrowly defined, an empire is a sovereign state whose head of state is an emperor; but not all states with aggregate territory under the rule of supreme authorities are called empires or ruled by an emperor; nor have all self-described empires been accepted as such by contemporaries and historians (the Central African Empire, and some Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in early England being examples). There have been "ancient and modern, centralized and decentralized, ultra-brutal and relatively benign" Empires. An important distinction has been between land empires m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
