Dancing Ancient and Modern; Decorating the King's Theatre

Between 1816 and 1818, John Nash's Regent Street project reached the Haymarket and Waterloo Place. Work during this part of the project involved re-casing the King's Theatre with roman cement and constructing a series of colonnades around the building. The new design completed an unfinished building, described as a 'vile and absurd edifice of brick', and transformed the relationship of the building to the city. Part of the design was a frieze made to the design of John Flaxman which was installed along the Haymarket façade. The title of the frieze might be expected to have privileged Opera - it was on the façade of the Opera House after all - but in fact it was dedicated to music and dancing. And it helped redefine the relationship of the Opera House to the cityscape. No designs for - or 'legible' illustrations of - the frieze were thought to survive, but new information has been located which has enabled some re-examination of the circumstances of the frieze; its relationship to Flaxman's frieze at the Covent Garden Theatre; the role of Flaxman in the preservation of the Elgin marbles; and the reading of the Opera House frieze as public art. 

About the author

Michael Burden is Professor in Opera Studies at the University of Oxford; he is also Fellow in Music at New College, where he is Dean. His published research is on the stage music of Henry Purcell, and on aspects of dance and theatre in the London theatres of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. These include a five-volume collection of opera documents, London Opera Observed, and a study of the London years of the soprano Regina Mingotti, and - edited with Jennifer Thorp - The Works of Monsieur Noverre Translated from the French.