[MELBOURNE THEATRE] Weston’s New Opera House. Bourke Str. East, Melbourne. Soirée d’Ethiop. Opera. Instrumental. Comedy. Terpsichore. Burlesque. West & Hussey’s Minstrels, presented with the complimen

A$1,250 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

[Drop title]. [Melbourne : Charles Troedel, 1869]. Souvenir programme printed in purple on cream silk, bifolium, 200 x 140 mm, a bifolium printed on two of [4] sides, stitched at left edge and opening to reveal the third side containing the programme itself, headed Grand Vice-Regal Command Night ; extremely well preserved; accompanied by two typed letters, the first on the letterhead of the State Library of Victoria, dated 13 December 1972 and signed by the Principal Librarian T. A. Kealy, addressed to the broadside s former owner, containing information regarding the precise date of the broadside, Weston s New Opera House, and the printer Charles Troedel; the second from four months earlier addressed to the same owner from W. T Cations, Deputy Liaison Officer for the National Library of Australia at the Australian High Commission in London, recommending that he contact the National Library of Australia or the State Library of Victoria in relation to his silk broadside. A rare piece of Melbourne theatre ephemera, this silk souvenir was printed by Melbourne s leading printer Charles Troedel for a special evening of entertainments presented by Weston and Hussey s minstrel troupe, almost certainly for the performance given on Friday 23 July 1869, which was announced in a notice in the Argus newspaper the preceding day as a Grand Vice-Regal Command Night . On the day of the performance, the Herald newspaper advised readers: This evening a vice-regal visit will be made to this pop

• Binding: Hardcover

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