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Royal Command Performance
A Royal Command Performance is any performance by actors or musicians that occurs at the direction or request of a reigning monarch of the United Kingdom. Although English monarchs have long sponsored their own theatrical companies and commissioned theatrical performances, the first Royal Command Performance to bear that name was staged at Windsor Castle in 1848 by order of Queen Victoria. From then on, command performances were frequently staged, often calling upon the leading actors from the London theatres, until the death of Albert, Prince Consort, Prince Albert in 1861. There were no further command performances until they recommenced in 1881. These included plays, revues, comic operas and other musical theatre. King Edward VII called for several performances each year. In 1911 a Great "Gala" performance was given by the theatrical profession at Her Majesty's Theatre, His Majesty's Theatre in London in celebration of the Coronation of George V and Mary, coronation of King ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Restoration
The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland took place in 1660 when King Charles II returned from exile in continental Europe. The preceding period of the Protectorate and the civil wars came to be known as the Interregnum (1649–1660). The term ''Restoration'' is also used to describe the period of several years after, in which a new political settlement was established. It is very often used to cover the whole reign of King Charles II (1660–1685) and often the brief reign of his younger brother King James II (1685–1688). In certain contexts it may be used to cover the whole period of the later Stuart monarchs as far as the death of Queen Anne and the accession of the Hanoverian King George I in 1714. For example, Restoration comedy typically encompasses works written as late as 1710. The Protectorate After Richard Cromwell, Lord Protector from 1658 to 1659, ceded power to the Rump Parliament, Charles Fleetwood and J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is a professional British light opera company that, from the 1870s until 1982, staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere. The company was revived for short seasons and tours from 1988 to 2003, and since 2013 it has co-produced four of the operas with Scottish Opera. In 1875 Richard D'Oyly Carte asked the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan to collaborate on a short comic opera to round out an evening's entertainment. When that work, ''Trial by Jury'', became a success, Carte put together a syndicate to produce a full-length Gilbert and Sullivan work, ''The Sorcerer'' (1877), followed by ''H.M.S. Pinafore'' (1878). After ''Pinafore'' became an international sensation, Carte jettisoned his difficult investors and formed a new partnership with Gilbert and Sullivan that became the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. The company produced the succeeding ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ellen Terry
Dame Alice Ellen Terry, (27 February 184721 July 1928), was a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and toured throughout the British provinces in her teens. At 16, she married the 46-year-old artist George Frederic Watts, but they separated within a year. She soon returned to the stage but began a relationship with the architect Edward William Godwin and retired from the stage for six years. She resumed acting in 1874 and was immediately acclaimed for her portrayal of roles in Shakespeare and other classics. In 1878 she joined Henry Irving's company as his leading lady, and for more than the next two decades she was considered the leading Shakespearean and comic actress in Britain. Two of her most famous roles were Portia in ''The Merchant of Venice'' and Beatrice in ''Much Ado About Nothing''. She and Irving also toured with great success in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility (supervision of sets, lighting, direction, casting, as well as playing the leading roles) for season after season at the West End’s Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as representative of English classical theatre. In 1895 he became the first actor to be awarded a knighthood, indicating full acceptance into the higher circles of British society. Life and career Irving was born to a working-class family in Keinton Mandeville in the county of Somerset. W.H. Davies, the celebrated poet, was a cousin. Irving spent his childhood living with his aunt, Mrs Penberthy, at Halsetown in Cornwall. He competed in a recitation contest at a local Methodist chapel where he was beaten by William Curnow, later the editor of ''The Sydn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madge Kendal
Dame Madge Kendal, (born Margaret Shafto Robertson; 15 March 1848 – 14 September 1935) was an English actress of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, best known for her roles in Shakespeare and English comedies. Together with her husband, W. H. Kendal (''né'' William Hunter Grimston), she became an important theatre manager. Madge Kendal came from a theatrical family. She was born in Grimsby in Lincolnshire, where her father ran a chain of theatres. She began to act as a small child and made her London debut at the age of four. As a teenager she appeared with Ellen and Kate Terry in Bath, and played Shakespeare's Ophelia and Desdemona in the West End. Under the management of J. B. Buckstone, she joined the company of the Haymarket Theatre in London in 1869, when she was 21. While in the company she met and married the actor W. H. Kendal. After their marriage, in August 1869, the two made it a rule to appear in the same productions, and became known to the public as "The K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Hunter Kendal
William Hunter Kendal (16 December 1843 – 7 November 1917) was an English actor and theatre manager. He and his wife Madge starred at the Haymarket in Shakespearian revivals and the old English comedies beginning in the 1860s. In the 1870s, they starred in a series of "fairy comedies" by W. S. Gilbert and in many plays on the West End with the Bancrofts and others. In the 1880s, they starred at and jointly managed (with John Hare) the St. James's Theatre. They then enjoyed a long touring career. Biography Kendal was born William Hunter Grimston in London, the middle son of portrait artist Edward Hunter Grimston, and his wife, Louisa ''née'' Rider. His maternal grandfather was a painter, and the boy demonstrated early talent in painting, but his parents urged him to study medicine. He often visited the Soho Theatre to sketch the performers, which led to his trying acting, in 1861, as Louis XIV, in ''A Life's Revenge'', billed as "Mr Kendall".Foulkes, Richard"Kendal, Da ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sweethearts (play)
''Sweethearts'' is a comic play billed as a "dramatic contrast" in two acts by W. S. Gilbert. The play tells a sentimental and ironic story of the differing recollections of a man and a woman about their last meeting together before being separated and reunited after 30 years. It was first produced on 7 November 1874 at the Prince of Wales's Theatre in London, running for 132 performances until 13 April 1875. It enjoyed many revivals, thereafter, into the 1920s. The first professional production of ''Sweethearts'' in Britain in recent memory was given in 2007 at the Finborough Theatre in London, along with Arthur Sullivan's ''The Zoo''. Background This romantic comedy of manners was written for Squire Bancroft and his wife Marie (née Wilton), managers of the Prince of Wales's Theatre, and starred Mrs. Bancroft. Gilbert wanted his friend John Hare to play the male lead, to take advantage of Hare's naturally boyish appearance and of his talent for impersonating elderly men, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Colonel (play)
''The Colonel'' is a farce in three acts by F. C. Burnand based on Jean François Bayard's ''Le mari à la campagne'' (''The Husband in the Country''), first produced in 1844 and produced in London in 1849 by Morris Barnett, adapted as ''The Serious Family''. The story concerns the efforts of two aesthetic impostors to gain control of a family fortune by converting a man's wife and mother-in-law to follow aestheticism. He is so unhappy that he seeks the company of a widow in town. His friend, an American colonel, intervenes to persuade the wife to return to conventional behavior and obey her husband to restore domestic harmony, and the colonel marries the widow himself. ''The Colonel'' was first produced on 2 February 1881, and its initial run at the Prince of Wales's Theatre lasted for 550 performances, an extraordinary run in those days. Simultaneously, a second company was touring the British provinces with the play. On 4 October 1881, ''The Colonel'' received a command ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Burnand
Sir Francis Cowley Burnand (29 November 1836 – 21 April 1917), usually known as F. C. Burnand, was an English comic writer and prolific playwright, best known today as the librettist of Arthur Sullivan's opera ''Cox and Box''. The son of a prosperous family, he was educated at Eton and Cambridge and was expected to follow a conventional career in the law or in the church, but he concluded that his vocation was the theatre. From his schooldays he had written comic plays, and from 1860 until the end of the 19th century, he produced a series of more than 200 Victorian burlesques, farces, pantomimes and other stage works. His early successes included the burlesques ''Ixion'', ''or the Man at the Wheel'' (1863) and ''The Latest Edition of Black-Eyed Susan''; ''or'', ''the Little Bill that Was Taken Up'' (1866). Also in 1866, he adapted the popular farce '' Box and Cox'' as a comic opera, ''Cox and Box'', with music by Sullivan. The piece became a popular favourite and was later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred Wigan
Alfred Sydney Wigan (24 March 1814Some sources say 24 March 1818 – 29 November 1878) was an English actor-manager who took part in the first Royal Command Performance before Queen Victoria on 28 December 1848.Gillan, DonA History of the Royal Command Performance StageBeauty.net, accessed 23 April 2011 Life Born at Blackheath to James Wigan, a teacher of languages and Secretary of the Dramatic Authors' Society, the actor and playwright Horace Wigan was his younger brother. Little is known of Wigan's early career, but it is believed he toured for a period as a singer. Using his middle name, he acted as Sidney or Sydney Wigan at the Lyceum Theatre in 1834, and 1835 he appeared with Louisa Cranstoun Nisbett at the Queen's Theatre. He then appeared under the name of Sidney Wigan with John Braham at the newly built St James's Theatre, creating the role of John Johnson in ''The Strange Gentleman'' by Charles Dickens. With Lucia Elizabeth Vestris he appeared from 1839 to 1844 at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leigh Murray
Henry Leigh Murray (1820–1870) was an English actor. Early life Murray was born in Sloane Street, London, 19 October 1820, with the surname Wilson. While a clerk in a merchant's office he made a start on amateur acting, in a small theatre in Catherine Street, Strand, his first appearance being about 1838 as Buckingham in ''King Richard III''. Other Shakespearean parts followed, and on 2 December 1839, under Hooper, manager of the York circuit, he made his professional debut at Kingston upon Hull, playing Ludovico in ''Othello''. On 17 September 1840, as Leigh (perhaps to avoid confusion with his manager) he appeared at the Adelphi Theatre, Edinburgh, under William Henry Murray, as Lieutenant Morton in ''The Middy Ashore'' by William Bayle Bernard. Occasionally visiting other Scottish towns, he remained in Edinburgh, at the Theatre Royal or the Adelphi, till the spring of 1845. Among the characters he played were Dr. Caius, Jan Dousterswyvel in ''The Lost Ship'' by William Thomp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
