MUSIC HALL AUDIENCES.

Evening Star, Issue 14637, 5 August 1911, Page 4

MUSIC HALL AUDIENCES.

"I venture to assort, without, fear of contradiction," says Mr Alfred Butt, in 'T. P. 's Magazine, "that there are in the pit and the gallery of our leading music halls as great .a knowledge and appreciation of the highest and best in the arts of music and dancing as there was in the stalls and dre*;s circles twenty years ago. Indeed, I do not know but that it is actually higher. People in all classes of tho community are set upon haying only tiie best, and it is quite astonishing how keen is the appreciation of classical music and dancing even in the lowest circles of society. And hot only is this improvement in public taste concerned with music and dancing, but it extends Tight along the whole line of the music-hall entertainment. Efficiency is much more insisted upon than it used to be, and the grey matter of the brain is an even more potent factor in modem music-hall success than was the red noso of the popular jester in the days gone by. The people generally appear to wish to lose sight cf the stupidly homely and obvious. They are much more subtle and introspective than, they used to ba It is a much more cosmopolitan and intellectual audience and a much better trained and educated one than that which' used to demand silly gangs and jokes about mothers-in-law and tipsy men m the seventies and 'eighties."