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Ballad Operas
D’Oyly Carte Collaboration
Burlesques were a popular entertainment in the Victorian era. A burlesque took a well-known play, story, opera or pantomime and satirised it in an exaggerated style with music. Burlesques also featured exaggerated costumes and often the leading actress played in breeches roles, revealing their legs to a scandalised audience. Even political and social events were ‘burlesqued’.
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'Buy a Broom' |
J R Planché and H J Byron the leading Victorian pantomime writers started out writing burlesques. Their work was stuffed with the puns and word play that the Victorians loved. The most famous burlesques are the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. As most of the humour in burlesques came from contemporary references and jokes many quickly dated and did not survive the passage of time. The audience had to know the original production in order to understand the send-up.
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'Pas de Quatre' music sheet |
Burletta Licence
The Licensing laws were in part responsible for the development of theatrical musical entertainment. A Burletta licence allowed a play to be produced only if it was accompanied by music (with a musical score underneath the action) or if a play had five musical pieces in each act.
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Eliza Vestris
Eliza Vestris, was an opera singer and actress who became the first great star of burlesque when in 1817 she played the title role in Giovanni in London, a send up of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. From 1830, she starred in a series of burlesques at her own theatre, the Olympic, opening with Olympic Revels, parodying Greek mythology. Her legs inspired many poems.
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Gaiety Theatre Souvenir brochure |
Burlesque at the Gaiety
At the Gaiety Theatre in the 1880s, Nellie Farren, Kate Vaughan, Edward Terry and E W Royce and later Fred Leslie starred in a series of take-offs of popular plays and folk tales, such as Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué based on Victor Hugo’s play Ruy Blas, The Forty Thieves and Little Robin Hood.
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Audio Tip |
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