Opéra

1817 · rif. AQ35026 — London: s.n. 1817. Single leaf broadside. Browning and staining to edges with very small loss to lower right corner small hole and tear to title slightly obscuring final letters. A scarce playbill recording an early effort by London's Lyceum Theatre renamed The English Opera House in the summer of 1817 to present an illumination of the 'audience part of the theatre' during a performance of 'Free and Easy' a comic opera. Although the use of gaslight in street-lamps had first been demonstrated a decade prior in 1807 the goal to introduce gaslighting to the commercial stage took years to evolve into the competitive landscape of 1817 where three of London's premier West End venues the Theatre Royal Covent Garden Theatre Royal Drury Lane and the Lyceum Theatre entered into a rapid race to produce the first fully-gaslit public performances in a West End venue. The Royalty an East End theatre later renamed The East London Theatre had previously installed gas piping and lighting fixtures across both the auditorium and the stage in 1816 demonstrating the viability of such a project. The English Opera House led by director Samuel Arnold proudly boasted on August 6 1817 that 'Gas Lighting will this evening be introduced over the whole stage' seemingly claiming themselves the winners of the century's most contested technical theatre contest. Despite this the lack of an illuminated auditorium meant that the theatre's audience remained in candlelight until a month later when the venue opened fully illuminated for the first time. The Theatre Royal Drury Lane despite only revealing its gaslit stage on the 6th September 1817 was able to argue that due to their introduction of gaslighting into the auditorium several weeks prior they were in fact the first of the three theatres to achieve the much vied- for feat. On the same night The Theatre Royal Covent Garden also offered a demonstration of gaslight on their stage finally concluding the rivalry and introducing a vital element of technical staging into London's leading venues for the remainder of the century. Rare; COPAC records no copies in the UK OCLC adds a single copy overseas Yale. . Dimensions 170 x 340 mm. [s.n.] unknown