ROYAL ALBERT HALL
ROYAL ALBERT HALL OFFICIAL SOUVENIR GUIDE
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OFFICIAL SOUVENIR GUIDE
The Royal Albert Hall is the world’s most famous stage. Since 1871 it has hosted everyone from Beyoncé and Chvrches to Churchill. In 2018 its breathtaking auditorium presented 401 events by the world’s greatest performers – taking in rock, pop and classical music, theatre, dance, films, Cirque du Soleil and even tennis – with the magical setting and inspired artists creating amazing memories for audiences. Opened in 1871 to fulfil Prince Albert’s vision of a central hall to promote the arts and sciences, the Hall is a registered charity that remains true to his founding ambitions while looking to the future. With 1.7 million visitors a year, ‘the nation’s village hall’ is the world’s busiest venue, while its 1,000 events in secondary spaces help to welcome a young, diverse audience to the Hall. Research conducted by Populus in 2018 found that the Hall was the most respected venue in its field, with members of the public regarding it as more special and yet less elitist than any comparable venue. The Royal Albert Hall’s Education & Outreach programme reaches more than 200,000 participants each year, working with schools, young people and the community, as well as other charities such as Music for Youth, as part of the Hall’s extensive public benefit remit. It creates memories, changes lives and provides inspiration through music for all, regardless of age or background.
royalalberthall.com
CONTENTS
Introduction 4 Prince Albert’s Dream 6 A Great Legacy 8 The Grand Opening 12 The Acoustics 14 The Organ 16 Building Improvements 18 Classical Music and Opera 20 A Versatile Space 23 BBC Proms 24 Rock and Pop 28 The Day the 1960s Started 32 More than a Concert Hall 33 Lest We Forget 34 Having a Ball 36 Cirque du Soleil 40 Comedy 41 Sport 42 Cinema 44 Education & Outreach 45 From Today to the Future 46 Picture Credits 48 Acknowledgements 48
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INTRODUCTION 4
Since 1871 the Royal Albert Hall has been fulfilling its Royal Charter commitment to support an understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of the arts and sciences, thrilling audiences with a wide range of events. In these pages you will read not just about the legendary concerts that have been performed at the Hall, but also the sporting events, the films, the lectures, the dance events – and a few surprises. Names that have graced the venue include the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Mstislav Rostropovich, Mahalia Jackson, Margot Fonteyn, Marlene Dietrich, Paul Robeson, Frank Sinatra, Julie Andrews, Muhammad Ali, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Alfred Hitchcock, Emmeline Pankhurst and Judi Dench. Every year more names are added as the Hall welcomes new generations of entertainers, artists and thinkers from across the globe to this magnificent arena. Today the Hall hosts approximately 400 events in the main auditorium and more than 1,000 in other spaces around the building, including music therapy sessions, workshops and classical coffee mornings. The outreach programme continues to inspire and educate well beyond the walls of the Hall itself, in keeping with its founding vision.
Def Leppard performing during the Teenage Cancer Trust concerts, 2018.
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PRINCE ALBERT’S DREAM 6
The story of the Royal Albert Hall began two decades before its opening, with the Great Exhibition of 1851. This ambitious international trade fair, with the full title of The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, was the brainchild of Queen Victoria’s visionary consort, Prince Albert, and eminent civil servant Henry Cole, who set up a Royal Commission to organise the event. To house the exhibition an immense iron and glass building, later known as the Crystal Palace, was built in Hyde Park measuring 563 metres long and 124 metres wide, with a central transept 33 metres in height. Opened by Queen Victoria on 1 May, the exhibition was a huge success. Over 15,000 exhibitors from 60 countries took part, and 100,000 objects were displayed in the 16 kilometres of galleries. They ranged from cutting-edge technology such as the first fax machine, an early THE ‘CRYSTAL PALACE’ IN HYDE PARK, vacuum cleaner and a leech-driven 1851 barometer, to curios including The Crystal Palace was based on a what was then the largest known radical design by Joseph Paxton, first diamond in the world, the presented as a hastily drawn plan on a 186-carat Koh-i-Noor. piece of blotting paper. The glass and iron During its five-month run the structure was designed to be pre-fabricated Great Exhibition attracted over for easy construction. It took 2,000 men just 6 million visitors and yielded a eight months to build, and cost £79,800. profit of £186,000, the equivalent Between 1852 and 1854 it was moved of around £21 million today. It to south London where it burned was decided that the best way to down in 1936. fulfil Prince Albert’s ambition to popularise the arts and sciences was to put the bulk of this money towards creating a cultural quarter in London.
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THE GRAND OPENING 12
The Royal Albert Hall was opened on 29 March 1871, with a concert attended by Queen Victoria and introduced by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, in front of an audience of 8,000. In his speech the Prince said that he hoped the Hall would ‘contribute to the promotion among my people of the love of art, as well as to the success of the annual exhibitions’ displaying ‘the choicest products of the industries of all nations’. In response, the Queen stated: ‘I wish to express my great admiration of this beautiful Hall and my earnest wishes for its complete success.’ Queen Victoria stayed to listen to Michael Costa’s A Biblical Cantata but left before a performance of L’Invocazione all’Armonia (Invocation to Harmony) composed by her late husband, which followed. Writing in her diary, she said the crowded Hall made her ‘quite giddy’. She added: ‘Good Mr Cole was quite crying with emotion & delight ... I had never been at such a big function since beloved Albert’s time, & it was naturally trying & “emotionment” for me.’
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above A trumpet that was played during the 1871 opening ceremony. below HM Queen Elizabeth II and members of the royal family in the Queen’s Box, with the hammercloth draped over the front, during the Festival of Remembrance.
The Hall’s royal connection is one that continues to this day. In support of Cole’s fundraising scheme, Victoria bought two boxes of 10 seats each, which were combined to create the Queen’s Box. When the monarch is in attendance the King’s or Queen’s Box, as it is known, is transformed. Silk drapes are hung on the walls, silk damask upholstered chairs replace the standard chairs and over the front of the box is placed ‘the hammercloth’, bearing the royal coat of arms. The monarch, who is patron of the Hall, generally attends once or twice a year (virtually always for the Festival of Remembrance in November), and other royal family members also make use of the box. The Prince of Wales also bought seats during the fundraising campaign and was elected the first President of the Hall. He shared a retiring room with fellow seat-owners the Dukes of Edinburgh and Cambridge, which is now called the Prince of Wales Room.
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The official state opening of The Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences, 29 March 1871.
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ROCK AND POP 28
The popular music of the day has always had a home at the Hall, which has hosted rock and pop acts since the 1950s. Before that, Paul Robeson, Maurice Chevalier and Gracie Fields were early headliners. From 1952 the jazz era brought British stars such as Chris Barber, Johnny Dankworth, Ronnie Scott, Vic Lewis and Acker Bilk to the stage. Musicians’ Union rules made it difficult for American musicians to appear, but some well-known singers made it across the pond, including Cab Calloway, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. The burgeoning rock ‘n’ roll scene was represented in variety-style concerts, featuring a wide range of popular music. Cliff Richard made his Hall debut in 1959 in a line-up that also included jazz and folk. One of Richard’s many return visits was the 1968 Eurovision Song Contest, the only one to be held at the Hall, when his song ‘Congratulations’, favourite to win, came second by just one point. below The Beatles outside the Hall’s Stage Door in 1963. right Nile Rodgers and Chic performing during the Teenage Cancer Trust concerts, 2018.
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It was within the variety format that the Beatles made their Hall debut in April 1963, at a time when they were making the transition from kings of Merseyside to national celebrities. Five months later they returned for a concert that also featured the Rolling Stones, making the Hall one of just two venues where these giants of rock appeared on the same bill. Bob Dylan’s triumphant headlining debut in 1965 made the Hall the British venue of choice for big-name acoustic and folk performers. Dylan returned in 1966 at the end of a world tour in which he had outraged many of his fans by going electric in the second half. While the so-called ‘Royal Albert Hall’ recording with the famous ‘Judas’ heckle was actually captured at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, the Hall’s show did see some of the tour’s biggest walkouts. Eric Clapton, the Hall’s most prolific headliner with over 200 performances, first appeared in 1964 with the Yardbirds. One of his most celebrated gigs was the 1968 farewell concert of supergroup Cream with Clapton playing alongside Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. They would be reunited on the same stage in 2005. In 2002 Clapton was musical director for one of the most memorable events ever staged at the Hall, Concert for George, in memory of George Harrison. The 1960s also saw gigs from Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Janis Joplin, the Who and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. But concerns about damage to the building and the morality of the music came to a head in 1971 when Frank Zappa
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clockwise, from top Cream Reunion Concert, 2005. Ella Fitzgerald with the Count Basie Orchestra, in aid of The Prince’s Trust and the British Deaf Association, 1990. Jimi Hendrix, 1969. Cliff Richard performing at the first of six 75th birthday concerts, 2015. Eric Clapton performing as part of a seven-night run of concerts, 2015.
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HAVING A BALL
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In 1881 the Hall hosted Ye Olde English Fayre, the first in a long line of elaborate pageants and balls that would become regular charitable events. Due to their success, a removable ‘Great Floor’ was installed some 4.5 metres above the Arena to give them more space. The most spectacular of all the balls was The Shakespeare Ball of 1911, staged
to raise money for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Over 3,000 people attended, including many crowned heads of Europe and world leaders who were in London for the coronation of George V. The Hall was transformed into a spectacular Italian garden designed by the architect Edwin Lutyens, with yew trees clipped into fantastic shapes around the base and vineclad bowers weighed down by bunches of grapes hanging just out of reach. In the
Circle a sloping grass lawn backed by flower beds led to a grove of cypress trees rising up into a cloudless sky. To rival the bohemian balls of Paris and Rome, the Chelsea Arts Club held annual balls between 1910 and 1958. Originally for Mardi Gras, they switched to New Year’s Eve after the First World War and were attended by up to 4,000 revellers in fancy dress. Drinking and dancing went on until 5a.m. when breakfast was served. Private staff balls were sponsored by many major companies, including Selfridges, Harrods, Whiteley’s, Marks & Spencer and John Lewis.
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opposite Ye Olde English Fayre: an old-Englishthemed fête, 1881. above Ballroom dancing at the Russian Debutante Ball, 2013. left Props for the ball held by the Chelsea Arts Club, 1953.
But a rarer treat was Lady Malcolm’s Servants’ Ball, staged annually between 1930 and 1938, where domestic servants could mix, dance and enjoy themselves. Some of the lucky invitees would supplement their
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meagre earnings by selling on their tickets for many times their face value. Much to Lady Malcolm’s disapproval, the ball was soon targeted by working-class gay men taking advantage of the anonymity of fancy dress and the freedom from police interference to enjoy themselves. The event is now considered a significant stepping stone in LGBT history. Pageants and balls are less common today, but the Hall was chosen for the 2013 inaugural Russian Debutante Ball to mark the 400th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty.
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CINEMA In the era of silent films, in the early 1900s, the Hall had a projection box in the Gallery and its own screen. Sidney Olcott’s From the Manger to the Cross was the first feature film to be shown, with 59 screenings in 1912 and 1913. In the 1920s two classic German expressionist films, Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen: Siegfried and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Faust, had their British premieres at the Hall, as did the two movies starring Betty Blythe, The Queen of Sheba and the Spanish-set Southern Love. Herbert Wilcox, the director of the latter, transformed the Arena into a bullring, covering the floor with sand and sawdust and featuring mock bullfights, flamenco dancing and a chorus singing the ‘Toreador Song’ from Carmen. For Frank Lloyd’s swashbuckling adventure The Sea Hawk in 1924, the
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prow of a pirate ship was erected beneath the screen. Two years later, the world premiere of Viktor Tourjansky’s Michel Strogoff was prefaced with an epic scene reenacted live with a 23-year-old John Gielgud leading a cast of 150, including members of the Imperial Russian Opera, accompanied by a 75-piece symphony orchestra. With the arrival of sound in 1929–30 the Hall was no longer equipped to screen films. That only changed in 1996 when Walt Disney chose the Hall for the world premiere of 101 Dalmatians, starring Glenn Close, using its own equipment. In its wake, the Hall has become the venue for many world and European premieres. In 2002 the Hall was decked with 500 6-metre icicles for its first Royal Film Performance (and first James Bond premiere) Die Another Day, with HM Queen Elizabeth II meeting members of the
cast, including 007 himself, Pierce Brosnan. James Cameron hired the Hall for the 2012 world premiere of Titanic in 3D. Another Disney hire was for the European premiere of Fantasia 2000 for which the score, comprised of popular classical excerpts, was played live. The idea would lead to some dazzling concert presentations a decade later, beginning in 2009 with The Lord of the Rings, the first dialogue film to have its music track removed and the score played live by an orchestra.
Planet Earth II Live in Concert, with the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Jessica Cottis, 2018.
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EDUCATION & OUTREACH Charity, education and inspiration have always been at the heart of the Hall’s vision and the outreach programmes both inside and outside of the building have touched thousands of lives, young and old. With the firm belief that music has the power to change lives, the Education & Outreach programme runs numerous events, including Friendship Matinees, relaxed performances, Tea Dances, Nordoff Robbins music therapy sessions and music workshops. The Hall also promotes its charitable work through dementia-friendly film screenings and by going into care homes and sheltered housing for songbook sessions with the elderly.
above Albert’s Band introduces children to jazz music at Jazz for Kids, 2017. centre The first Tea Dance organised by the Education & Outreach team, 2016. below Singer Lianne La Havas hosts a music workshop ahead of her headline Albert Sessions performances, 2016.
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ROYAL ALBERT HALL
ROYAL ALBERT HALL OFFICIAL SOUVENIR GUIDE
●
OFFICIAL SOUVENIR GUIDE
The Royal Albert Hall is the world’s most famous stage. Since 1871 it has hosted everyone from Beyoncé and Chvrches to Churchill. In 2018 its breathtaking auditorium presented 401 events by the world’s greatest performers – taking in rock, pop and classical music, theatre, dance, films, Cirque du Soleil and even tennis – with the magical setting and inspired artists creating amazing memories for audiences. Opened in 1871 to fulfil Prince Albert’s vision of a central hall to promote the arts and sciences, the Hall is a registered charity that remains true to his founding ambitions while looking to the future. With 1.7 million visitors a year, ‘the nation’s village hall’ is the world’s busiest venue, while its 1,000 events in secondary spaces help to welcome a young, diverse audience to the Hall. Research conducted by Populus in 2018 found that the Hall was the most respected venue in its field, with members of the public regarding it as more special and yet less elitist than any comparable venue. The Royal Albert Hall’s Education & Outreach programme reaches more than 200,000 participants each year, working with schools, young people and the community, as well as other charities such as Music for Youth, as part of the Hall’s extensive public benefit remit. It creates memories, changes lives and provides inspiration through music for all, regardless of age or background.
royalalberthall.com