A Nineteenth-Century Amusement Guide
Written by Wilfrid Rooke Ley.
Music selected by Mark H. Lubbock and Max Robertson
Singers: Joan Hammond (soprano), David Lloyd (tenor)
Narrator, Wilfrid Rooke Ley
The BBC Theatre Orchestra, Leader, Tate Gilder, Conductor, Stanford Robinson
This is the first of a series of programmes which will paint a musical picture of amusements during Queen Victoria's reign.
The nineteenth-century man-about-town had a selection of pleasures that would be considered small by modern standards. Nevertheless the night life of London in those days was never mediocre.
Tonight's broadcast will cover the early years of Victoria's reign, from the 'thirties to the 'sixties, and listeners will be told among other things about opera and opera stars at Her Majesty's Theatre in the Haymarket, about ballet and the days of the great Taglioni, and about the kinds of private parties that were fashionable in those days.
A feature of the broadcast will be the playing of the pas de quatre, a dance executed by most of the famous ballet dancers of the day. The music was found in the British Museum.