Augustus Harris

Moving into management

Harris continued to appear as an actor. In 1877 Wyndham cast him as the juvenile lead in The Pink Dominos at the Criterion Theatre in the West End. It ran for 555 performances, of which Harris did not miss one.

In 1881 Harris married Florence Edgcumbe Rendle (1859–1914). They had one child, Florence Nellie (1884–1931), who married the actor Frank Cellier in 1910.

Harris's ambitious seasons of high culture included the Meiningen Court Theatre company in 1881, with a repertoire of German plays and Shakespeare in German translations, and the following year Adelaide Ristori and Rignold in Macbeth. In 1882 Harris engaged leading German singers and the conductor Hans Richter for a season of German operas that included the first British performances of Die Meistersinger and the first production anywhere outside Germany of Tristan und Isolde. Over the next four years he hosted the Carl Rosa Opera Company's seasons of opera in English, and he also presented operatic seasons sung in the original languages by celebrated international singers. His productions did much to revitalise the presentation of Italian opera in London, which had for some years chiefly consisted of vocal display and little dramatic coherence.

alt=caricature of rotund white man, middle-aged in appearance, in formal evening wear. He is balding and neatly bearded and moustached The 1887 opera season at Drury Lane celebrated Queen Victoria's golden jubilee by featuring a particularly starry international cast, including Jean de Reszke, Édouard de Reszke, Victor Maurel, Minnie Hauk and Lilian Nordica. The repertoire was Italian (Il barbiere di Siviglia, La traviata and Rigoletto), French (Les Huguenots, Faust and Carmen) and German or Austrian (Don Giovanni and Lohengrin). Wearing comments that the season was an artistic and social success, but lost £10,000. He assembled a syndicate of influential backers including Lord Charles Beresford, Earl de Grey and Henry Chaplin and took over the lease of the house in early 1888. The repertoire consisted of 19 operas, beginning with Lucrezia Borgia and ending with Les Huguenots.

alt=man in chef's clothing, with large carving knife opening a pie full of little birds with human heads – the heads being those of leading operatic singers of the day. The pie dish is marked "Royal Italian Opera", and a menu on the table includes the names of Emma Albani, Nellie Melba and other operatic stars There was no rival opera season in 1888, but Mapleson mounted an Italian season at Her Majesty's the following year. His mediocre casts, conventional repertoire and old-fashioned productions did not draw the public. By contrast Harris attracted capacity audiences with top-flight stars and works such as Die Meistersinger never before seen at Covent Garden.

Harris continued with his policy of starry casts, impressive staging and texts sung in their original language – a practice that became known as "the cosmopolitan system". By 1892, when he engaged Gustav Mahler to conduct the British premiere of The Ring, it had become the norm at Covent Garden, To reflect the new reality the "Italian" was dropped from the name of the opera house in the same year. When there was no room in Covent Garden's schedules for a new work that he favoured, he leased another theatre for the purpose. and was knighted in 1891 in recognition of his contribution to the state visit to Britain of the German Emperor. and becoming Grand Treasurer of the Grand Lodge of England, under the Prince of Wales as Grand Master.

The reviewer in The Era who praised the 1892 pantomime commented on the astonishing pressures on Harris: Harris's health gave way under his enormous workload. His funeral, on 27 June at Brompton Cemetery, was attended by several thousand people of all classes ("a final grand procession he would have surely enjoyed", in Wearing's words). Among the mourners were musicians, comedians, managers, authors, singers, critics and politicians, as well as the general public. (Among those in the cortège were George Alexander, F.) C. Burnand, Herbert Campbell, Richard D'Oyly Carte, Edouard and Jean de Reszke, Dan Leno, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, T. P. O'Connor, Pol Plançon, W. S. Penley, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Edward O'Connor Terry and Herbert Beerbohm Tree.

Reputation and memorials On Harris's death, the critic Clement Scott wrote:

The Illustrated London News said:

In addition to the funerary monument in Brompton Cemetery, Harris is commemorated by a fountain on the Catherine Street side of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It was designed by Sidney R. J. Smith and erected by public subscription through the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association. Above the fountain is a bronze bust of Harris by Sir Thomas Brock.

Plays

Melodramas Staged at Drury Lane. Co-authors shown in brackets. The World (Paul Merritt and Henry Pettitt) 1880 Youth (Merritt) 1881 Pluck: A Story of £50,000 (Pettitt) 1882 A Sailor and His Lass (Robert Williams Buchanan) 1883 Freedom (George Fawcett Rowe) 1883 Human Nature (Pettitt) 1885 A Run of Luck (Pettitt) 1886 Pleasure (Merritt) 1887 The Spanish Armada (Henry Hamilton) 1888 The Royal Oak (Hamilton) 1889 A Million of Money (Pettitt) 1890 The Prodigal Daughter (Pettitt) 1892 A Life of Pleasure (Pettitt) 1893 The Derby Winner: A new and original sporting and spectacular drama, (Cecil Raleigh and Hamilton) 1894 Cheer, Boys, Cheer (Raleigh and Hamilton) 1895 Source: Dictionary of National Biography.

Pantomimes After Bluebeard in 1879, Harris's next nine pantomimes at Drury Lane were written by E. L. Blanchard. From 1888 Harris co-wrote them: his collaborators are shown in brackets: Babes in the Wood (Blanchard and Harry Nicholls) 1888 Jack and the Beanstalk or, Harlequin and the Midwinter Night's Dream (Nicholls) 1889 Beauty and the Beast (William Yardley) 1890 Humpty Dumpty (Nicholls) 1891

Robinson Crusoe) (Nicholls) 1893 Dick Whittington (Raleigh and Hamilton) 1894 Cinderella (Raleigh and Arthur Sturgess) 1895

Libretti The Basoche (1891). Opéra comique in three acts. English dialogue (English lyrics by Eugène Oudin); music by André Messager. Amy Robsart (1893). Opera in three acts, based on a story by Walter Scott. Scenario by Harris, developed by Frederic Weatherly in English and Paul Milliet in French; music by Isidore De Lara. The Lady of Longford. Opera in one act (1894). Co-written with Weatherly; music by L. Emil Bach. The Little Genius (1896). Comic opera in two acts. Adapted from the German (Der Wunderknabe) by Harris and Arthur Sturgess; music by Eugen von Taund, J. M. Glover and Landon Ronald (staged at the Shaftesbury Theatre the month after Harris's death).