Sadler’s Wells Moves To The Coliseum

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31768, 27 August 1968, Page 12

Sadler’s Wells Moves To The Coliseum

ILondon Correspondent.] LONDON.

Even opera has become victim of a cut-price war, with the opening in London on August 21 of a new Sadler’s Wells Opera House in the heart of the West End. After suffering recent humiliation as a cinerama theatre, the Coliseum—which has been linked with such great names of the British theatre as Irving, Tree and Bernhardt —is back in the business of live theatre with the opera “Don Giovanni.” Sadler’s Wells theatre was formerly a good three miles away from the heart of theatreland, in the Islington area. The company’s shift to within a few yards of Trafalgar Square is a bold gamble, and sounds like a declaration of war to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, one mile away.

The Royal Opera House has good cause to worry. Opera lovers will be able to go twice to Sadler's Wells for the price they would pay at Covent Garden. With tickets ranging in price from 5s to 455, the peasants are flocking to the Coliseum, which already has 40.000 advance bookings. It has cost Sadler’s Wells £130.000 to restore the Coliseum to its red-plush and walnut panelling glory. For months workmen with pneumatic drills have been enlarging the orchestra pit area (singing “Figaro here, Figaro there” as they did so) and altering the shape of the proscenium arch.

In the cartoonist’s view of the opening night, the Australian conductor, Charles Macikerras, is shown in the orches-

tra pit watched by an audience including (right to left) Stephen Arlen, managing director of Sadler's; Glen Byam Shaw, director of productions; Margaret Harris, resident designer (working under the name of “Motley”) who is responsible for the new proscenium arch; Sir John Gielgud, director of the first production “Don Giovanni;" and Derek Jarman, a 24-year-old designer whose sets for the new production are quite controversial. Gielgud finds a life of Shakespeare comes in useful in directing singers, and this is the third opera he has directed.