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A plan of the Pantheon Opera House (1790–92)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Curtis Price ,
Judith Milhous  and
Robert D. Hume
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Extract

The Pantheon Opera remains among the least known of the major theatrical ventures in eighteenth-century London. It came into being amidst the conspiracies that flourished after the King's Theatre, Haymarket, was destroyed by fire in June 1789. Conceived as a kind of English Court Opera, the Pantheon was backed at enormous expense by the Duke of Bedford and the Marquis of Salisbury. It struggled through the 1790–91 season, accumulating ruinous debts, and then on 14 January 1792 it too burned to the ground, just four nights into its second season.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , November 1991 , pp. 213 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 The recent discovery of the Pantheon opera papers in the Bedford Estates Office will, ironically, make it among the most fully documented. The three of us are at work on a book entitled The Pantheon and Italian Opera in London, 1785–1800 (to be published by Oxford University Press).Google Scholar

2 Christie's (London), 13 December 1988, item 69. We are grateful to Sybil Rosenfeld for calling the plans to our attention, and to Charles Mann, Curator of Rare Books, Pennsylvania State University Libraries, for acquiring them and making them available to us.

3 We have reconstructed these events in ‘A Royal Opera House in Leicester Square (1790)’, this journal, 2 (1990), 1–28.Google Scholar

4 The licence was not formally announced until the London Gazette of 7–1008 1790.Google Scholar

5 Harvard Pantheon scrapbook (TS 326.1F), p. 94.

6 Mander and Mitchenson Theatre Collection (London), Pantheon scrapbooks, I, 176.

7 The best account of the early history of the Pantheon is in Survey of London, Vols. XXXIXXXIIGoogle Scholar, The Parish of St James Westminster, Pan II: North of Piccadilly (London, 1963), Chapter 18.Google Scholar

8 A painting by William Hodges of 1772 (with figures by Zoffany) shows the rotunda in its original form. Leeds City An Gallery and Temple Newsam House; reproduced in Price, Curtis, ‘Turner at the Pantheon Opera House, 1791–92’, Turner Studies, 7 (1987), Plate 3.Google Scholar Cf. Survey of London, XXXII, Plate 16.Google Scholar

9 Survey of London, XXXI, 276Google Scholar, quoting a newspaper clipping of January 1790. The Survey erroneously gives the organ-maker's name as John ‘Stretzle’ (p. 271), but the reading in Public Record Office (P.R.O.) C123/T24 is quite clear.

10 The advertisement was bought by the Pennsylvania State University Libraries from Ximenes in September 1990. No copy of this flyer is listed in the ESTC.

11 Survey of London, XXXI, 273Google Scholar, citing the Middlesex Land Register.

12 Osborn Collection, Yale University. The letter is printed in Price, Curtis, ‘Italian Opera and Arson in Late Eighteenth-Century London’, Journal of the A men can Musicological Society, 42 (1989), 59.Google Scholar

13 P.R.O. C12/192/25. A notice in the Times of 30 September 1790 invites proprietors of the Pantheon to come to the offices of Messrs Smith and Franco, Solicitors, to sign the lease.

14 P.R.O. C33/482, fol. 158.

15 P.R.O. C12/192/27 (Sheldon vs. Mackell). The next quotation is from the same suit.

16 Mander and Mitchenson scrapbooks, I, 176.

17 See Bedford Opera Papers, 5.K.7 and P.R.O. C12/192/27. The rent on No. 6 was £120 p.a.; on No. 8 £73 16s p.a. The eventual purchase price on the latter was £805.

18 See the Times of 1 March 1791, and Reminiscences of Michael Kelly, 2 vols. (1826; rpt. New York, 1968), II, 21–2.Google Scholar Letter to Luigi Borghi of 18 September 1790, Bedford Opera Papers 2.A.51.

19 British Architectural Library, Holland Papers HoH/3/4/2.

20 zo C12/192/27.

21 Mander, and scrapbooks, Mitchenson, I, 180.Google Scholar

22 Mander, and scrapbooks, Mitchenson, I, 176.Google Scholar A fifth tier of boxes was built (the ‘Green Boxes’) but was not regarded as sufficiently grand to house subscribers.

23 If this comment refers to the King's Theatre, Haymarket, as altered by Novosielski in 1782, it is very misleading. Edward A. Langhans calculates the size of its stage as 34 (?) feet wide at the proscenium opening and 80 feet deep. See ‘The Theatres’ in The London Theatre World, 1660–1800, ed. Hume, Robert D. (Carbondale, Il., 1980), 64.Google Scholar

24 Description of the Allegory, Painted for the Curtain of the King's Theatre, Pantheon (London: T. Bensley, 1791).Google Scholar

25 Newspaper item of 19 December 1791, Scrapbook, Harvard, p. 116.Google Scholar

26 Rowlandson's engraving The Prospect Before Us (1791)Google Scholar and a watercolour in the British Museum (King's Topographical Collection, XXV.20.I.b.). For discussion of the former, see Grego, Joseph, Rowlandson the Caricaturist, 2 vols. (London, 1880), I, 283–9.Google Scholar The watercolour original for Rowlandson's engraving is reproduced in Mander, Raymond and Mitchenson, Joe, The Lost Theatres of London (London, 1968), Plate 60.Google Scholar The engraving simplifies some detail but is substantively identical.

27 Clore Gallery for the Turner Collection, London (Turner Bequest IX.A). Reproduced in Price, ‘Turner’ (see n. 8), Plate 1.

28 Clore Gallery for the Turner Collection, London (Turner Bequest IX.B).

29 The Soane Museum also has a basement floorplan

30 For example, the height of the double flies given in the detail on the elevation.

31 When this ceiling was added we cannot be sure. A notice in the Morning Chronicle of 18 02 1791Google Scholar reporting on the first night says, ‘we fear that as a Theatre it will gratify only the eye. It must undergo still more changes before the ear will be satisfied. Whether it is that the dome is too high and disproportioned to the breadth, or that the orchestra is sunk too low beneath the audience, we cannot tell, but the sound does not swell and spread in equal volume; and it is the most inaudible in the best parts of the Theatre: the Pit and the first and second tier of Boxes hear very indistinctly … it was the prevailing sentiment, that if the cieling [sic] was lowered to the top of the fourth tier of Boxes, the defect would be mostly probably amended.’ This would, of course, have eliminated the fifth tier of boxes and a substantial part of the galleries.

32 scrapbook, Harvard, p. 128.Google Scholar Cf. Morning Post, 21 03 1791.Google Scholar

33 Bedford Opera Papers, 2.A.34.

34 Bedford Opera Papers, Box 6.F.37.b.

35 scrapbook, Harvard, p. 109.Google Scholar

36 Bedford Opera Papers, Box 6.F.37.b, For an edited transcription, see Curtis Price, ‘Turner’ (n. 8), Appendix.

37 Graham Barlow calculates wing dimensions and distances as follows:

First set 28′ 6″ apart and 24′ 6″ high, second set 26′ 0″ apart and 22′ 6″ high, third set 24′ 0″ apart and 21′ 0″ high, fourth set 22′ 0″ apart and 20′ 0″ high, fifth set 20′ 0″ apart and 18′ 6″ high. The downstage wings needed to be about 5 feet wide. The upstage height of the proscenium arch was 28 feet 6 inches, so there was a 4-foot gap to be covered by a valance. (Personal letter, Graham Barlow to Robert Hume, 11 February 1991.)

38 Bedford Opera Papers, 5.H.17.a.

39 Bedford Opera Papers, 1.PP.3; Box 3 Book X.

40 Bedford Opera Papers, 2.G.15.a (discussed in Section 3, below).

40 Bedford Opera Papers, 2.G.15.a (discussed in Section 3, below).

41 Mader, and scrapbooks, Mitchenson, II, 19.Google Scholar

42 An advertisement of 27 January 1791 asks ‘Such of the Proprietors of Boxes as have not given in the names of their respective Subscribers, are requested to send them to Mr. Lee, at the Pantheon, as soon as possible, that no disappointment may arise from the delay in making out their Tickets previous to the opening’ (scrapbook, Harvard, p. 97Google Scholar).

43 Mander, and scrapbooks, Mitchenson, I, 176Google Scholar (item of 11 July 1790).

44 (London, [1792]), 10.Google Scholar

45 Mander, and scrapbooks, Mitchenson, II, 22.Google Scholar

46 A newspaper notice concerning the use of the rebuilt Haymarket by the Drury Lane company while the new Drury Lane was under construction says that ‘A dilemma has arisen from the want of Dressing-rooms for the Performers. It appears that the Italians always dressed at home previously to their appearance on the Stage. Thus, accommodations of that nature were not found requisite … The total want of Dressing-rooms at the new Opera House, will reduce the Managers of the Drury-Lane Company to the absolute necessity of squeezing two or three Performers into one apartment’ ( Oracle, 25 08 1791).Google Scholar

47 [Earl of Mount Edgcumbe,] Musical Reminiscences of an Old Amateur, for Fifty Years, from 1773 to 1823 (London, 1824), 77.Google Scholar The snobbish Mount Edgcumbe was one of the occupants of Box 6 on the King's side (traditionally stage right in the King's Theatre, Haymarket). Bedford Opera Papers, Box 1, Ivory Tickets.

48 scrapbook, Harvard, p. 97.Google Scholar

49 Bedford Opera Papers, 2.C.57.a.

50 They were probably cramped in any case. A newspaper item of 12 February 1791 reports that ‘Mrs Hobart was much dissatisfied at the Pantheon Rehearsal; the doors of the Boxes are, in heropinion, too narrow, unless Ladies are intended to be shoved in edgeoways’. scrapbook, Harvard, p. 97Google Scholar.

51 Bedford Opera Papers, Box 3 Book X.

52 Mander, and scrapbooks, Mitchenson, supplement, p. 139.Google Scholar

53 See our The King's Theatre, Haymarket, 1778–1792, Appendix B (forthcoming).

54 Mander, and scrapbooks, Mitchenson, II, 42.Google ScholarSurvey of London, XXXI, 276Google Scholar, prints the £34,000 figure uncritically.

55 scrapbook, Harvard, p. 126.Google Scholar

56 Bedford Opera Papers, 5.K.7. Printed in full in virtually identical form in the Morning Chronicle of 19 03 1791.Google Scholar

57 O'Reilly also includes £2000 for ‘reinstating’ the Pantheon – half the sum, we may note, estimated by Holland and Dance for returning the premises to their original condition if the stage were put to the north.

58 Bedford Opera Papers, 5.D.32.

59 ‘The Architect has touched two out of £7000 but in doing this, he has drawn an hornet's nest about his ears, the subordinate tradesmen now demanding payment of him as their principal.’ Mander, and scrapbooks, Mitchenson, II, 31.Google Scholar

60 Mander, and scrapbooks, Mitchenson, II, 49 (06 1793 report of King's Bench)Google Scholar; scrapbook, Harvard, p. 131Google Scholar, report on King's Bench dated 27 June 1793.

61 scrapbook, Harvard, p. 129Google Scholar; Mander, and scrapbooks, Mitchenson, II, 27Google Scholar; P.R.O. C12/192/27. The logjam was probably broken by the Duke of Bedford, who is said to have ‘given notice to Mr. Sheridan’ that unless a lease of No. 7 were granted ‘to the proprietors of the Pantheon’, he would refuse to renew the ground lease ‘for the rebuilding of Drury Lane theatre’. The Times, 1 03 1791.Google Scholar

63 See the secret agreement documented in note 76, below.

64 Mander, and scrapbooks, Mitchenson, II, 32Google Scholar, and supplement p. 139; scrapbook, Harvard, p. 1712 1791Google Scholar (p. 117) and 19 December 1791 (p. 116).

65 scrapbook, Harvard, p. 116.Google Scholar

66 Bedford Opera Papers, 2.E.1.a.

67 Bedford Opera Papers, 5.H.17.a.

68 Bedford Opera Papers, 2.G.15.a.

69 Had the opening through the rear wall been made into the garden of No. 6, the door would probably be visible in the Museum of London painting (see Plate 5).

70 Bedford Opera Papers, 2.F.21.a.

71 The description of the fire by Henry Angelo, quoted at length in Survey of London, XXXI, 277–8Google Scholar, asserts that the fire staved in the northern end of the building – an error that casts considerable doubt on the legitimacy of some of Angelo's more highly coloured passages.

72 Hartley, , Proposals(see n. 44), 8.Google Scholar

73 See the tables of figures in Langhans, (n. 23), 61–5.Google Scholar

74 See Ferrero, Mercedes Viale, ‘Il percorso dell'invenzione’, in Storia dell'opera italiana, ed. Bianconi, Lorenzo and Pestelli, Giorgio, vol. 5, La spettacolaritá (Turin, 1988), 82–4.Google Scholar

75 Figures drawn from Giuseppe Piermarini, ‘Parallelo di alcuni Teatri d'Italia’ (Turin, Biblioteca Civica) and Bauman, Thomas, ‘The Society of La Fenice and Its First Impresarios’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 39 (1986), 335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76 Two copies are preserved – Bedford Opera Papers, 6. Vol. I.a, item 1, and P.R.O. LC 7/88, 391–415.

77 E.g., scrapbook, Harvard, pp. 127, 139Google Scholar; Mander, and scrapbooks, Mitchenson, II, 42.Google Scholar Bedford Opera Papers, Box 6.

78 We want to thank Dr Graham Barlow of the University of Glasgow, who explained the inset detail in the section to us and generously drew the illustrations reproduced in Plates 8–11. For permission to quote the Bedford Opera Papers we are grateful to the Marquis of Tavistock, the Trustees of the Bedford Settled Estates, and Mrs M.P. G. Draper, Archivist. We are also grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for the grant under which we carried out the research for this article.