Opera Gallery
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Opera, England, United Kingdom in Europe
Choose from 155 pictures in our Opera collection for your Wall Art or Photo Gift. Popular choices include Framed Photos, Canvas Prints, Posters and Jigsaw Puzzles. All professionally made for quick delivery.
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Lebrecht Music and Arts

Lebrecht Music and Arts

Holland House library after an air raid BB83_04456
HOLLAND HOUSE, Kensington, London. An interior view of the bombed library at Holland House with readers apparently choosing books regardless of the damage. Photographed in 1940. The House was heavily bombed during World War II and remained derelict until 1952 when parts of the remains were preserved.
Holland House, originally known as Cope Castle, was a great house in Kensington in London, situated in what is now Holland Park. Created in 1605 in the Elizabethan or Jacobean style for the diplomat Sir Walter Cope, the building later passed to the powerful Rich family, then the Fox family, under whose ownership it became a noted gathering-place for Whigs in the 19th century. The house was largely destroyed by German firebombing during the Blitz in 1940; today only the east wing and some ruins of the ground floor still remain.
In 1940, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth attended the last great ball held at the house. A few weeks later, on 7 September, the German bombing raids on London that would come to be known as the Blitz began. During the night of 27 September, Holland House was hit by twenty-two incendiary bombs during a ten-hour raid. The house was largely destroyed, with only the east wing, and, miraculously, almost all of the library remaining undamaged. Surviving volumes included the sixteenth-century Boxer Codex.
Holland House was granted Grade I listed building status in 1949, under the auspices of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947; the Act sought to identify and preserve buildings of special historic importance, prompted by the damage caused by wartime bombing. The building remained a burned-out ruin until 1952, when its owner, Giles Fox-Strangways, 6th Earl of Ilchester, sold it to the London County Council (LCC). The remains of the building passed from the LCC to its successor, the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1965, and upon the dissolution of the GLC in 1986 to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
Today, the remains of Holland House form a backdrop for the open air Holland Park Theatre, home of Opera Holland Park. The YHA (England and Wales) "London Holland Park" youth hostel is now located in the house. The Orangery is now an exhibition and function space, with the adjoining former Summer Ballroom now a restaurant, The Belvedere. The former ice house is now a gallery space
© Historic England Archive

Scene from "Don Caesar de Bazan", at the Princess Theatre, 1844
Scene from "Don Caesar de Bazan", at the Princess Theatre, 1844. A performance on the London stage of "Don Cesar de Bazan", an opera comique by Jules Massenet: ...this very effective drama, first produced, in English, at the Princess Theatre...The scene is in the third act, in which the licentious King is detected by Don Caesar...The performance never fails to be received with an enthusiastic burst of applause, which it well deserves; for it is one of the finest
coups de theatre we ever remember to have witnessed'. From "Illustrated London News", 1844, Vol I
© The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Merrie England by Basil Hood
Promotional postcard for Merrie England by Basil Hood; music Edward German. First produced at the Savoy Theatre, 2nd April 1902. The patriotic story concerns love and rivalries at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, when a love letter sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to one of Queen Elizabeths Ladies in Waiting, Bessie Throckmorton, ends up in the hands of the Queen. Flier for the Hastings and St. Leonards Operatic and Dramatic Society, at the Gaiety Theatre, Hastings 18th April 1912, but the image would almost certainly have already been used for a poster for a professional company. Date: circa 1912
© The Michael Diamond Collection / Mary Evans Picture Library