[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 compliments of Messrs. Weston & Hussey. H. Peachman, Agent.

[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 popular place of amazement. A special programme has been prepared for the occasion’.

Silk souvenirs such as this were never intended for the general public; they were prestigious keepsakes reserved for the Vice-Regal party and high-society patrons.

‘Weston’s New Opera House in Bourke Street, Melbourne, was opened on 31 May 1869, when Weston and Hussey’s Minstrels appeared, probably for the first time in Melbourne. [This silk] programme would appear to be that for the performance given on Friday 23 July 1869, under the patronage of Lady Manners Sutton (wife of the Governor of Victoria). The complete details of the programme are not given in the newspaper advertisement, but the “Ghost in a Pawnshop” was one item on the programme, and it was advertised that “General Sherman’s March to the Sea” would be performed for the first time on the following night (i.e. 24 July 1869) which is supported by the notice at the foot of your programme. H. Peachman is named as the agent at the foot of the advertisement as in your programme. The programme was printed by Charles Troedel, a young lithographic printer, who had come to Melbourne from Europe in 1860, and had set up in business for himself three years later. He gained a fine reputation for the quality of his lithographic work. As Mr. Cations mentioned in respect to the National Library in Canberra, the La Trobe Library is also anxious to acquire any kind of material which documents in particular the history of the city of Melbourne and the State of Victoria, including that relating to theatre, of which the Library already has a very considerable collection….’ (Letter of T. A. Kealy to E. W. Lemberger, Leamington Spa, UK, dated 13 December 1972).