Covent Garden Theatre

“ At these central theatres successful plays are allowed to “run” for protracted periods, but there are numerous fine houses in other parts of London which are generally occupied by a succession of touring companies presenting either revivals of popular plays or plays successful at the moment in the central theatres. The principal music halls (variety theatres) are in Shaftesbury Avenue, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and the Strand. The Covent Garden theatre is the principal home of grand opera ”

“ So we came home, visiting, on our way, the site of Covent Garden Theatre, lately burnt down. The exterior walls still remain perfect, and look quite solid enough to admit of the interior being renewed, but I believe it is determined to take them down.
After a slight lunch and a glass of wine, we walked out, along Piccadilly, and to Hyde Park, which already looks very green, and where there were a good many people walking and driving, and rosy-faced children at play. Somehow or other the shine and charm are gone from London, since my last visit ”

“ When Rich removed to Covent Garden Theatre, Lambert secured the assistance of Amiconi, and together they produced scenery of far higher quality than any previously executed. Lambert was a man of jovial temperament and shrewd wit, and frequently spent his evenings at work in his painting-loft at Covent Garden Theatre, to which men of note in the fashionable or theatrical world resorted to share his supper of a beef-steak, freshly cooked on the spot. ”

“ We are very strong believers here in the power of one person to damage another in absence; and when you can kill a man by sticking pins into a waxen image of him—which everybody knows to be true—surely you ought to be able to help a friend, especially with the aid of the Bratach sith. Imagine Covent Garden Theatre a hundred fathoms down in the deep sea, with mermaidens playing the brass instruments in the orchestra, and the fairy-folk on the stage, and seals disporting themselves in the stalls, and guillemots shooting about the upper galleries in pursuit of fish. ”

“ I cannot, however, help observing that many large doors seem so obviously necessary in Theatres, that I dare not attempt to account for the diminutive size of the two through which the audience actually creep in the pit of Covent-garden Theatre. An alarm of fire in that house must end fatally, whether it spread, or was immediately extinguished [310:A] .
The amusements of the present day are very confined: the two Theatres and the Opera for the winter, and the Haymarket for the summer, are [311] the only established places of entertainment ”

“ Waters,” said he, after glancing at the introductory note I had brought, “and cannot possibly go into the business with the attention and minuteness it requires till the morning. But I’ll tell you what: one of the parties concerned, and the one, too, with whom you will have especially to deal, is, I know, to be at Covent Garden Theatre this evening. It is of course necessary that you should be thoroughly acquainted with his person; and if you will go with me in the cab that is waiting outside, I will step with you into the theatre, and point him out.” ”

“ The public were becoming critical about their ghosts. Credit could not be given to the spirits of the theatre if they exceeded a certain consistency. There was a demand for something vaporous and unearthly, gliding, transparent, mysterious. Scenic illusion was acquiring an artistic quality. The old homely simple processes of the theatre were exploded. The audience would only be deceived upon certain terms. Mr. Boaden, adapting Ann Radcliffe's "Romance of the Forest" to the stage of Covent Garden Theatre, records the anxiety he felt about the proper presentment of its supernatural incidents. ”

“ John Rich, the patentee of Covent Garden Theatre, is usually named as its founder, but the germ of the Society (its members loathed the name of Club) lay in the creature needs of his scene painter, George Lambert, of whom Edwards relates in his Anecdotes of Painting—
“As it frequently happened that he was too much hurried to leave his engagements for his regular dinner, he contented himself with a beefsteak broiled upon the fire in the painting-room. In this hasty meal he was sometimes joined by his visitors, who were pleased to participate in the humble repast of the artist. ”

“ In the meantime he turned his serious attention to composition, and in 1778 produced his first English comic opera, The Flitch of Bacon, at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, with so great success that he was immediately engaged as composer to Covent Garden Theatre, for which he continued to produce English operas and other dramatic pieces in quick succession until 1797, when he resigned his office, and devoted himself to compositions of a different class, producing a great number of very beautiful glees, some instrumental chamber music, and other miscellaneous compositions. ”

“ After the destruction of Covent Garden Theatre, where it had met for seventy years, the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks migrated to the Bedford Coffee-house, where it remained till the building of the Lyceum Theatre in 1809, in a special room 44of which it took up its abode till 1830, when the Lyceum also was burnt down. ”

“ In my walk through life I have constantly found myself among excellent creatures of this sort. The world is full of vague people, and in the average man, and still more in the average woman, the chronological sense seems to be entirely wanting. Thus, when I have occasionally stated in a mixed company that my first distinct recollection was the burning of Covent Garden Theatre, I have seen a general expression of surprised interest, and have been told, in a tone meant to be kind and complimentary, that my hearers would hardly have thought that my memory went back so far. ”

“ Two actors belonging to Covent Garden Theatre, being on their way to Brighton, stopped at an inn to change horses, where there was a coach coming towards London, waiting the same accommodation, on the roof of which was seated a farmer’s man, who hailed the two actors thus: So, masters, you are going a mumming I see. How the devil does that fellow know we are performers? ”

“ Covent Garden Theatre has had cold water thrown upon it so long, that no expense need be gone to in laying on any more of the salubrious element. The genius of the place is also favourable to such an experiment as the one proposed, for in the event of water being scarce, recourse might be had to some of the old pumps, which, though rather out of use, could easily be made to act again. These pumps possess the advantage of never causing an overflow. ”

“ There is still a Ben Jonson’s Head tavern with a painted portrait of the poet in Shoe Lane, Fleet Street; a Ben Jonson’s Inn at Pemberton, Wigan, Lancashire; and another at Weston-on-the Green, Bicester.
Shakespeare’s Head is to be seen in almost every town where there is a theatre. At a tavern with that sign in Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, the Beefsteak Society (different from the Beefsteak Club,) used to meet before it was removed to the Lyceum Theatre. George Lambert, scene-painter to Covent Garden Theatre, was its originator. ”

“ She is said to be a good actress, a very great beauty, and a Roman Catholic, so there is something for all tastes."
August 18, 1815: "Among the improvements making at Covent Garden Theatre, preparatory to opening for the ensuing season, backs are fixing to the seats in the pit, so that each person will sit at ease as in a chair." ”

“ Green has been at great pains to collect.
The spécialité of this very agreeable place is the olden music, which is sung here with great intelligence and spirit; the visitors are of the better and more appreciative class, and often include amateurs of rank. The reserved gallery is said to occupy part of the site of the cottage in which the Kembles occasionally resided during the zenith of their fame at Covent-Garden Theatre ”

“ THEATRICAL INTELLIGENCE. BY THE REPORTER OF THE “OBSERVER.”
The “mysterious and melodramatic silence” which Mr. C. Mathews promised to observe as to his intentions in regard to the present season, has at length been broken. On Monday last, September the sixth, Covent Garden Theatre opened to admit a most brilliant audience. Amongst the company we noticed Madame Vestris, Mr. Oxberry, Mr. Harley, Miss Rainsforth, and several other distingué artistes. It would seem, from the substitution of Mr. Oxberry for Mr. Keeley, that the former gentleman is engaged to take the place of the latter. ”

“ Covent-Garden is devoted to concerts, and hears the tragic muse no more. Even in the minor theatres, where tragedy is sometimes attempted, it can only be relied on for transient popularity. Its restoration was attempted at the Princess's Theatre in Oxford Street, but apparently with no remarkable success; and the tragedies of Othello and Hamlet, supported by the talent of Macready, required to be eked out by Mrs Candle's Curtain Lectures. We are no strangers to the talent displayed at many of the minor theatres both by the authors and performers ”

“ The theatre is, I believe, doing very well just now, and we go pretty often to the play, which I like. I have lately been seeing my father playing Falstaff several times, and I think it is an excellent piece of acting; he gives all the humor without too much coarseness, or charging, and through the whole, according to the fat knight's own expression, he is "Sir John to all the world," with a certain courtly deportment which prevents him from degenerating into the mere gross buffoon. They are in sad want of a woman at both the theatres. I've half a mind to give Covent Garden one. ”

“ George Lambert, Rich's scene-painter at Covent Garden, says he, "being a man of wit, and of repute as an artist, was frequently visited by persons of note while at his work in the scene-room. In those days it was customary for men of fashion to visit the green-room, and to indulge in a morning lounge behind the curtain of the theatre. ”

“ Encouraged by success he at length decided upon the erection of a larger theatre, the stage of which should afford greater facilities for scenic and mechanical display, and accordingly built the first Covent Garden Theatre, which he opened Dec. ”

“ An English theatre is the very throne of pantomime; nor do I believe that the gallery and boxes of Drury Lane or Covent Garden filled on the proper occasions with holiday folks (big or little) yield the palm for undisguised, tumultuous, inextinguishable laughter to any spot in Europe. I do not speak of the refinement of the mirth (this is no fastidious speculation) but of its cordiality, on the return of these long looked-for and licensed periods ”

“ The only other place left, therefore, was the New York City Center, in West Fifty-fifth Street. Webster made a thorough inspection of this former Masonic Temple from front to back, but found the place entirely inadequate, with a stage and an orchestra pit infinitely too small, and the theatre itself quite unsatisfactory for a company the size of the Covent Garden organization and productions. As a matter of fact, it would be hard to find a less satisfactory theatre for ballet production. ”

“ The reader who recollects my previous notices of the enlargement of Drury-lane Theatre will perceive, from those and the subsequent, how rapidly population and the admiration of theatrical amusements have increased. Mr. Harris, [304] proprietor of Covent-garden Playhouse, found it necessary in 1782 to raise the roof eight feet, and make other alterations, to benefit himself, and accommodate the publick. It was then that the Theatre was adorned with those genuine ornaments in the Grecian style, which have lately given place to I know not what strange substitutes of painted deal boards. ”

“ From our situations in the Theatres Royal of Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden we have had opportunities of observing many circumstances relative to our general property, which must have escaped those who do not materially interfere in the management of that property. One point in particular has lately weighed extremely in our opinions, which is, an apprehension of a new Theatre being erected for some species or other of dramatic entertainment. ”

“ I bade Covent Garden and my dear London audience farewell on Friday last, when I acted Lady Townley for the first time. The house was crammed, and as the proprietors had fixed that night for a second benefit which they gave me, I was very glad that it was so. I was very nicely dressed, and to my own fancy acted well, though I dare say my performance was a little flat occasionally. But considering my own physical powers, and the immense size of the theatre, I do not think I should have done better on the whole by acting more broadly ”

“ Books of costumes are always at hand, so that a degree of historical accuracy is now attained in Opera costume, which materially assists the illusion; and no such anachronism is visible in Covent Garden as in a certain theatre across the Thames, where, instead of the Saracenic minarets of Cairo, this gorgeous Arab city is represented by pyramids, obelisks, and sphynxes. The painting-room of Covent Garden is a light and lofty apartment at the top of the house, and the name of Mr Grieve is a sufficient guarantee both for historical accuracy and artistic character. ”

“ The box, for the whole of the evening, is private property. It is but justice to add, that if the french theatres are less gay than the english, they are infinitely more orderly; and I never remember to have seen any thing like a dispute, or riot at any of the spectacles. Women, too, of a certain description, do not ply for custom, (with the single exception of one theatre, which I shall afterwards name) as at Covent Garden, and Drury Lane, and indeed are rarely seen at the larger play-houses. ”