LONDON MEMORIES OF "IOLANTHE"

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 43, 3 May 1935, Page 3

LONDON MEMORIES OF "IOLANTHE"

Electric Light First Used On a Stage ee [zt Was in "Tolanthe," written in 1882, that tot thé fitst time electric lamps were used as personal ornament on any stage. The fairies: wore them in their hair. It is recorded also that in the second act, sky borders were dispensed with for the first time in London or on r the Continent,

Some of the, public were more at~. tracted.to the wearers than to the elec: trical ornaments. ,,One of them, indeed, on the opening night, dared to send 2 mish note to a fairy. The dainty miss -was it Jessie Bond?-having been bred in the Queen’s Seminary, forthwith showed the missive to the Fairy _ ‘King-W. S. Gilbert himself, Lord’ "High Guardian.of the Savoy Proper+. ties, Thereupon from his back-stage throne he sent. forth a triple thunderMpoligci! tAASEY & ‘ Let the writer of the note. remove himself from his private box and depart in peace. Or, if he did not, let him be prepared to be forcibly ejected from the theatre. Or, thirdly, a member of the staff, perhaps Mr. Gilbert "in propria,’ would step out on the

Stage and denounce the corrupter of ‘youth to the congrega-the audience, Is it any. * wonder, asks Mr. Isaac Goldberg in his "Story of Gilbert and Sullivan," that, even as Nanki Poo was to do, this social offender fled? Even the great Gladstone sufficiently uunstarched ‘himself to witness "Tolanthe." He wrote to Sullivan a "cordial and ¢haracteristie letter of thanks, which was followed in the May of the next year by the offer of a iy ‘Enighthoods: "aot