[MELBOURNE; VAUDEVILLE] Harry Rickards Programme. Part 1. For week commencing Saturday 27th May, 1905.

Cover: Rickards New Opera House, Melbourne. Open to the public, Saturday, 18th May, 1901. Melbourne : Printed by McCarron, Bird & Co. for the Publishers, Metropolitan Publishing Co. Prop. Ltd., 317 Collins Street, [1905]. Narrow quarto (270 x 105 mm), original pink wrappers printed in blue (detached and with horizontal fold), [8] pp, illustrated with vignette portraits of Rickards and his daughters, and with illustrated advertisements for Raftopulos’ New Cafe in Swanston Street, and for Present Day corsets; full-page programme for the New Opera House production of The Palace of Dolls, with advertisements for forthcoming attractions Alice Pierce (American impressionist) and fred Millis (“the world’s greatest ventriloquist”); contents very clean, staples holding.

Very scarce Melbourne music hall / vaudeville circuit programme from the Federation era, produced for Rickards’ New Opera House.

English-born vaudeville entertainer and theatre owner Harry Rickards (1843-1911) bought the Garrick Theatre in Sydney in 1893, which he renamed the Tivoli. Building on the immense success of this venue, he later expanded his theatre ’empire’ by taking over the Opera House, Melbourne, and becoming lessee of theatres in other capital cities.