German Reed Entertainment

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German Reed Entertainment was founded in 1855 and operated by Thomas German Reed (1817–1888) together with his wife, Priscilla Reed née Horton (1818–1895). The entertainments were held at the Royal Gallery of Illustration, Lower Regent Street, and later at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, in London. Thomas German Reed also composed the music for many of the entertainments, and his wife usually appeared in them.

1 The German Reed theatrical revolution
2 Forty years of entertainments
3 References
4 External links

[edit] The German Reed theatrical revolution

This form of entertainment consisted of musical plays "of a refined nature". During the early Victorian era, visiting the theatre was considered distasteful to the respectable public. Shakespeare was played, but the London stage became dominated by risque burlesques and bad adaptations of French operettas. Jessie Bond wrote,

"The stage was at a low ebb, Elizabethan glories and Georgian artificialities had alike faded into the past, stilted tragedy and vulgar farce were all the would-be playgoer had to choose from, and the theatre had become a place of evil repute to the righteous British householder.... A first effort to bridge the gap was made by the German Reed Entertainers....[1]

The German Reed Entertainments became the first respectable venue for dramatic amusement to which the public could safely bring their children, presenting gentle, intelligent, comic musical entertainment.

[edit] Forty years of entertainments

In 1855, the first performance of "Miss P. Horton's Illustrative Gatherings," musical theatre performances took place. The entertainments usually consisted of one or two brief comic operas designed for a small number of characters. These eventually became "Mr. And Mrs. German Reeds Entertainments". They called the establishment, euphemistically, the "Gallery of Illustration," rather than a theatre, and the pieces were called "entertainments" or "illustrations", eschewing the words "play", "extravaganza", "melodrama" or "burlesque". Reed himself composed the music for many of these pieces, and often appeared in them, along with Mrs. German Reed. Reed experimented with what he called opera di camera - small chamber operas by young composers. There was nothing else like this establishment in London. The Gallery rapidly achieved popularity.

The Gallery was an intimate 500-seat theatre. The accompaniment consisted of piano, harmonium and sometimes a harp. But the German Reeds were able to attract fine young composers such as Molloy, Clay, Sullivan, and Cellier, the best scenic designers for their tiny stage, and the best young writers from Punch and Fun magazines. At first, the entertainments utilized a cast of three, but by the mid-1860s, they had expanded to pieces with a cast of four. Often the pieces' plots involved mistaken identities and disguises. From 1860 to 1877, the German Reeds were assisted by John Orlando Parry (1810-1879), a pianoforte player, mimic, parodist and humorous singer. He created a new type of musical and dramatic monologue that became popular. Fanny Holland appeared in scores of the entertainments beginning in 1869 and, except for two years, continuously thereafter until 1895. Her husband, dramatist Arthur Law, wrote many of the entertainments. Leonora Braham, who later went on to create several of the soprano heroine roles in the Savoy Operas in the 1880s, played in the entertainments for several years beginning in 1870. Carlotta Carrington was also a frequent player with the German Reeds.

The dramatist W. S. Gilbert wrote the librettos for six entertainments presented by the German Reeds from 1869 to 1875, some of them with music by Reed himself, including No Cards, Ages Ago, Our Island Home, A Sensation Novel, Happy Arcadia, and Eyes and No Eyes. Several of these pieces had ideas in embryonic form that would later re-appear in the Savoy Operas. Ages Ago, for instance, had a gallery of portraits that come to life, an idea re-used in Ruddigore. Mrs. German Reed's performances inspired Gilbert to create some of his famous contralto roles. Reed also mounted the first professional production of Arthur Sullivan and F. C. Burnand's Cox and Box and commissioned a second opera from the pair, The Contrabandista. Given the German Reeds' role in both Gilbert's and Sullivan's first operatic successes, one wag commented that the Gilbert and Sullivan operas were "cradled among the Reeds."

Other German Reed entertainments included A Night Surprise by Law; Number 204, by Burnand; A Happy Bungalow by Law; Once in a Century by Gilbert a Beckett; In Possession, Babel and Bijouand; Back from India by Henry Pottinger Stephens; Our New Doll’s House by W. Wye; and Nobody's Fault by Law.

After 1870, Corney Grain, a clever, refined, and humorous society entertainer, joined the German Reeds, gradually taking over where Parry left off. After the retirement of the elder German Reeds, their son, Alfred (1846-1895), also an actor, carried on the business in partnership with Grain at the St. George's Hall, Regent Street. The deaths of Alfred German Reed and Grain, both in 1895, ended the entertainments.

[edit] References

Stedman, Jane W. (1996). W. S. Gilbert, A Classic Victorian & His Theatre. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-816174-3.
Stedman, Jane W., Ed. (1969). Six comic plays by W. S. Gilbert. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd. (with an introduction by Stedman)
Stedman, Jane, ed. (1967). Gilbert Before Sullivan. University of Chicago Press.