Richard D'Oyly Carte was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer, and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era. He built two of London's theatres and a hotel empire, while also establishing an opera company that ran continuously for over a hundred years and a management agency representing some of the most important artists of the day.
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre was designed by C. J. Phipps for Richard D'Oyly Carte and opened on 10 October 1881 on a site previously occupied by the Savoy Palace. Its intended purpose was to showcase the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, which became known as the Savoy operas.
The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. Its red-brick facade dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus behind a small plaza near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road. The Palace Theatre seats 1,400.
Margaret Valerie Masterson is a retired English opera singer, a lecturer and Vice-President of British Youth Opera. After study in Italy, she began to sing opera in Europe. Returning to England, Masterson performed as principal soprano with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1964 to 1969, becoming popular with audiences and participating in several of the company's recordings, as well as those of Gilbert and Sullivan for All and the BBC.
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.
Blanche Roosevelt was an American opera singer, author and journalist. She is best remembered for creating the role of Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan when that opera premiered on Broadway in 1879.
The London Opera Centre, a school for the training of opera singers and other opera professionals, existed in England between 1963 and 1978. It was located in the former Troxy Cinema on Commercial Road in London's East End Borough of Stepney. The Troxy, with 3,520 seats, opened in 1933 and was one of England's largest cinemas. As a result of wartime damage and the general decline of the area, the cinema closed in November 1960.
Rutland Barrington was an English singer, actor, comedian and Edwardian musical comedy star. Best remembered for originating the lyric baritone roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas from 1877 to 1896, his performing career spanned more than four decades. He also wrote at least a dozen works for the stage.
Gillian Knight is an English opera singer and actress, known for her performances in the contralto roles of the Savoy operas. After six years from 1959 to 1965 starring in these roles with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, Knight began a grand opera career.
Edward Solomon was an English composer, conductor, orchestrator and pianist. He died at age 39 by which time he had written dozens of works produced for the stage, including several for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, including The Nautch Girl (1891). Early in his career, he was a frequent collaborator of Henry Pottinger Stephens. He had a bigamous marriage with Lillian Russell in the 1880s.
François Arsène Cellier, often called Frank, was an English conductor and composer. He is known for his tenure as musical director and conductor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company during the original runs and early revivals of the Savoy operas.
Robert Evett was an English singer, actor, theatre manager and producer. He was best known as a leading man in Edwardian musical comedies and later managed the George Edwardes theatrical empire.
Grahame Clifford, was an English singer and actor, known for comic parts in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas and in character roles for the Royal Opera Company, Covent Garden.
Ruth Vincent was an English opera singer and actress, best remembered for her performances in soprano roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in the 1890s and her roles in the West End during the first decade of the 20th century, particularly her role as Sophia in Tom Jones.
Edward Geoffrey Toye, known as Geoffrey Toye, was an English conductor, composer and opera producer.
The Globe was a Victorian theatre built in 1868 and demolished in 1902. It was the third of five London theatres to bear the name, following Shakespeare’s Bankside house, which closed in 1642, and the former Rotunda Theatre in Blackfriars Road, which for a few years from 1833 was renamed the Globe. The new theatre was also known at various times as the Royal Globe Theatre or Globe Theatre Royal. Its repertoire consisted mainly of comedies and musical shows.
Richard Charles Watson was an Australian bass opera and concert singer and actor. He is probably best remembered for his performances and recordings of the comic bass-baritone roles of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, but he appeared in a wide range of operas at the Royal Opera House and with the Carl Rosa Opera Company with such singers as Lotte Lehmann and Lauritz Melchior, under conductors including Sir Thomas Beecham and Bruno Walter.
Linda Verner was a British singer and actress of the Victorian era who appeared in operetta, pantomime, Victorian burlesque and other comic and musical works in London and on tour in Britain and abroad from the 1870s to the early 1890s.
Runs of several thousand performances were familiar in West End theatres in the 21st century. The closure of London theatres in the Covid-19 pandemic halted the continuous runs of eight shows that had been running for more than 4,000 performances. Such long runs were a phenomenon not seen before the late 20th century: in earlier years, much shorter runs were the norm, even for shows considered great successes.
Lewis Cairns James was a Scottish-born baritone, actor, educator and opera producer most prominent during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. From 1887 to 1891 he performed with a D'Oyly Carte Opera Company touring company performing the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan before embarking on a successful career on the West End stage and as a teacher of elocution.
