This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 Excerpt: ...Reinagle soothed their ruffled spirits by first throwing the doors open for public inspection of the house and then by arranging three popular concerts in February, 1793. After this the house was again closed for exactly one year. The reasons for this strange procedure were simple enough. In the first place, Wignell exercised such deliberation in the selection of his company that he did not reach America until September, 1793, and when he arrived the first news from Philadelphia conveyed to him was that of the terrible yellow-fever epidemic. Under the circumstances, the company could not very well proceed to the stricken city. It had to be quartered in the villages of New Jersey until Wignell saw his way clear to counteract the bad effects of idleness by a theatrical trip to Annapolis in December, 1793, and January, 1794. As by the terms of the contracts, so the actor-manager William B. Wood informs us in his "Personal Recollections of the Stage," the actors were to receive pay from the moment of their arrival in America, and as they had to be boarded and fed, Wignell incurred debts to the amount of $20,000 before he could open the Chestnut Street Theatre on February 17, 1794, with Arnold's 'Castle of Andulasia'! The best-known vocalist in Wignell and Reinagle's troupe was Miss George of the Haymarket Theatre and Drury Lane, who was equally famous as an oratorio singer. She is said to have had a voice of astonishing compass and sweetness and her taste and execution were pronounced equal to that of any singer on the English stage. She seems to have resembled Mrs. Eames of our own time in this that, as one critic put it, "she had been taught apparently rather to astonish the ear than to please the heart." Just previous to her American enga...
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