1906–1935 · Gramophone Company, Victor
Actors who played to Victorian houses, recorded
There is no recording of a West End performance before the war, and there never will be: nobody was allowed to put a machine in a theatre. What exists instead is this — actors brought into a studio, stood in front of a horn, and asked to do the speech everyone knew them for, in three and a half minutes. Ellen Terry was sixty-four when she recorded the mercy speech she had first played for Irving in 1879. Beerbohm Tree's Falstaff is the only sound of a manager who ran His Majesty's Theatre as a personal empire. The style is enormous, deliberate, sung almost — and it is the nearest thing we have to standing in a nineteenth-century stalls seat.
12 broadcasts · 7 seasons held · London and New York
1 January
1906
Gramophone Company, Victor
2 min
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree — Julius Caesar. Recorded 1906, Special. Disc digitised by the Great 78 Project;
1 January
1906
Gramophone Company, Victor
2 min
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree — Henry IV, Part 1. Recorded 1906, Special. Disc digitised by the Great 78 Project;
1 January
1911
Gramophone Company, Victor
1 min
Ellen Terry — The Merchant of Venice. Recorded 1911, His Master's Voice. Disc digitised by the Great 78 Project;
1 January
1911
Gramophone Company, Victor
1 min
Ellen Terry — The Winter's Tale. Recorded 1911, Victrola. Disc digitised by the Great 78 Project;
1 January
1920
Gramophone Company, Victor
4 min
E. H. Sothern — Julius Caesar. Recorded 1920, Victrola. Disc digitised by the Great 78 Project;
1 January
1921
Gramophone Company, Victor
4 min
E. H. Sothern — Hamlet. Recorded 1921, Victrola. Disc digitised by the Great 78 Project;
1 January
1921
Gramophone Company, Victor
3 min
E. H. Sothern and Julia Marlowe — Romeo and Juliet. Recorded 1921, Victrola. Disc digitised by the Great 78 Project;
1 January
1928
Gramophone Company, Victor
4 min
John Barrymore — Henry VI, Part 3. Recorded 1928, Victrola. Disc digitised by the Great 78 Project;
1 January
1930
Gramophone Company, Victor
3 min
Henry Ainley — Hamlet. Recorded 1930, His Master's Voice. Disc digitised by the Great 78 Project;
1 January
1930
Gramophone Company, Victor
2 min
Henry Ainley — Hamlet. Recorded 1930, His Master's Voice. Disc digitised by the Great 78 Project;
1 January
1930
Gramophone Company, Victor
2 min
Henry Ainley — Hamlet. Recorded 1930, His Master's Voice. Disc digitised by the Great 78 Project;
1 January
1935
Gramophone Company, Victor
3 min
Dame Edith Evans and John Gielgud — Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest. Recorded 1935, His Master's Voice. Disc digitised by the Great 78 Project;