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James Lewis's Plans for an Opera House in the Haymarket (1778)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Judith Milhous  and
Robert D. Hume
Judith Milhous
Affiliation:
Judith Milhous is Distinguished Professor of Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center, New York, and
Robert D. Hume
Affiliation:
Robert D. Hume is Edwin Erie Sparks Professor of English Literature at the Pennsylvania State University.
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Extract

In 1780 James Lewis published the first of two magnificent folios, entitled Original Designs in Architecture. The title page explains that it consists of ‘Plans, Elevations, and Sections, for Villas, Mansions, Town-Houses, &c. and a New Design for a Theatre. With Descriptions, and Explanations of the Plates, and an Introduction’. Plates XIX-XXII are for ‘a New Theatre, designed for the Opera’. In fact, the designs are for a new opera house intended to occupy the site on which John Vanbrugh's Queen's/King's Theatre in the Haymarket had stood since 1705. The building would consume all the existing site and much of the surrounding property. Lewis explains the origins of his plans: ‘Our Theatres being upon a very small scale, compared with those of other principal cities in Europe, about two years ago [that is, in 1778] a report prevailed that a New Theatre was intended to be built by subscription, which might serve as well for all Dramatick Performances, as Concerts, Assemblies, Masquerades, &c. And the proprietors of the Opera House intending to purchase several adjoining houses and ground, to render the theatre eligible for the various purposes mentioned, suggested the idea of making a design adapted to the situation of the present Opera House, with the principal front towards Pall Mall’ (p. 12). This grand edifice would be like no other theatre in London.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1994 , pp. 191 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1994

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References

Notes

1. London: Printed for the Author, 1780. Book II was ‘Printed for the Author by Cooper and Graham, 1797’. We have used the British Library copy. For what is known of Lewis (1751–1820), see Colvin, Howard, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840, 2nd edn (London: John Murray, 1978).Google Scholar For some comments on his Original Designs in Architecture, see Harris, Eileen, assisted by Savage, Nicholas, British Architectural Books and Writers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), s.v. Lewis.Google Scholar

2. Survey of London, Vols. XXIX-XXX: The Parish of St. James Westminster, Part One, South of Piccadilly (London: Athlone Press, 1960), XXIX, 250.Google Scholar

3. For further discussion of contemporaneous trends in theatre design, see Carlson, MarvinPlaces of Performance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

4. The label ‘B’ was omitted from the plan, but was presumably meant to apply to the staircase on the southeast corner of the auditorium, opposite the gallery staircase (‘C’) on the southwest corner.

5. Given the mezzanine, this is what would now be called the first floor.

6. John Orrell suggests to us that the stage house may have been a story higher than the rest of the building. If so, the windows shown on the plan of the second floor in the south wall, that between the paint room and the stage, were probably higher in the stage house than the paint room and designed to provide some natural light in the fly space and stage area. This and subsequent comments, for which we are very grateful, are contained in a private letter of 11 April 1994 from John Orrell to Robert D. Hume.

7. We are grateful to John Orrell for pointing out this discrepancy to us.

8. The changes Sheridan and Harris made over the summer of 1778 were more than cosmetic. On 2 January 1779, Lady Mary Coke complained, ‘I went this evening to the Opera for the first time & shou'd not have known our Box & am sorry to say the change is not to its advantage. This so much less that if all the subscribers were in it the box wou'd be much crowded.’ These alterations to the auditorium were, however, far less drastic than those carried out by William Taylor in 1782. On 1 September 1782 Lady Mary noted ‘a very disagreeable circumstance with regard to the Opera’, which was that ‘the House is altering and our Box is to be again reduced. None as I am informed are to remain for six Persons four are to be the Number. Lady Ailesbury tells me She has proposed to You that we should take one in the front which to me is the worst part of the House the best thing I should think that we could do would be to get one Lady and Gentleman additional and take two Boxes together where ours was for surely it was the best situation in the House. Lady Betty Mackenzie I should think would like to subscribe and I imagine there will be no difficulty in finding another Gentleman.’ The Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, Connecticut, holds a facsimile copy of Lady Mary's MS Letter-Journal.

9. Some Account of London, 4th edn (London: Robert Faulder, 1805), p. 101.Google Scholar

10. For a discussion of the alterations, see Price, Curtis, Milhous, Judith and Hume, Robert D., Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London, Volume I: The King's Theatre, Haymarket, 1778–1791 (forthcoming from Oxford University Press).Google Scholar We would like to thank Curtis Price for his consultation and advice on this essay, which developed out of research for our book.

11. The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, ed. Lewis, W. S., et al., 48 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937–1983), XI, 14–15Google Scholar (23 June 1789 to Mary and Agnes Berry).

12. For these figures, see Milhous, Judith, ‘The Capacity of Vanbrugh's Theatre in the Haymarket’, Theatre History Studies, 4 (1984), 38–46.Google Scholar

13. Copies of the inventory are preserved among the papers in PRO C107/65 and C107/66. It was taken in conjunction with the sale of Taylor's goods and chattels on 22 May 1783.

14. The ‘Baise Covering’ for the Coffee Room is said to measure 19 yds by 9 yds, which is 57′ × 27′. On the ‘Novosielski’ plan, the Coffee Room measures 57′ 8″ × 28′ 4″. There was nothing to be gained from encroaching on this money-making space.

15. [Feltham, John,] The Picture of London for 1802 (London: Printed by Lewis and Co. for R. Phillips, [n.d.]), p. 200.Google Scholar

16. For groundplan and longitudinal section, see Izenour, George C., Theater Design (New York: McGraw Hill, 1977), pp. 202–203.Google Scholar

17. We have reproduced the groundplan, elevation of the main entrance and a perspective drawing of the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux in ‘A Royal Opera House in Leicester Square (1790)’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 2 (1990), 1–28, plates 2–4.Google Scholar

18. £60,000 is the estimate made by Antoine Le Texier for an opera house in 1790. See Ideas on the Opera (London: J. Bell, 1790), p. 52.Google Scholar

19. Survey of London, XXIX, 250.

20. See Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London, volume I, chapter 1.

21. See Price, , Milhous, and Hume, , ‘The Rebuilding of the King's Theatre, Haymarket, 1789–1791’, Theatre Journal, 43 (1991), 421–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar