Author’s Note
169 Words
Author’s NoteThe theatre built on the same site in Bow Street, Covent Garden, and which is the present Royal Opera House, was opened on May I5th 1858. The first was built in 1732.
The present theatre saw the establishment of Verdi, Wagner, Puccini and Strauss – also the debut of eighteen year old Adelina Patti.
Since the last war the Covent Garden Opera Company has joined with the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet, which in 1956 received a Royal Charter from the Queen and became known as the Royal Ballet.
The descriptions of Kate Hamilton’s Saloon are correct and she was the Queen of London’s nightlife from the eighteen-fifties until she died at the beginning of the sixties.
The Salon, however, carried on and the Shah of Persia patronised it on his first visit to London in 1872. He was reputed to have been an embarrassing guest when at Buckingham Palace he executed a member of his staff with a bowstring.
When this was done, the body was buried at night in the Palace grounds.
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