| 1896 - 1997 The Society was founded in 1886 and claims to be in the twelfth oldest
Operatic in the country and certainly the oldest in the West of England.
It began life as a simple Choral Society, renting a rehearsal room in
the New Town Hall at the princely sum of five shillings weekly, But quickly
developed into an excellent Operatic Society, whose first public production
was H.M.S Pinafore in 1890.
It is very likely that Mr. Hyde Dendy in creating his Bijou theatre in
1870 set the stage for Opera in the town. It was the only room in Paignton
licenced for the performance of stage plays.
Broadly speaking the story of the Society falls into three main groups
of shows.
The first phase was largely works on Gilbert & Sullivan, mixed in
with other available works on the day, such as " Les Cloches de Cornville"
1901, "Dorothy" 1902 and "Rip Van Winkle" 1904 until
a very poorly received "Haddon Hall" in 1911 created a very
20th century cash flow problem and the society sunk without much trace
until afetr the Great War.
The second phase ran from 1922 until 1967 with performances staged mainly
in Paignton's Palace Avenue Theatre and was largely a mixture as before
G & S, the old favourites all presented with varying degrees of success,
financial gains or losses.
In 1929, The Pirates of Penzance Jubilee was staged in the Bijou theatre
in Paignton, this being the venue of the first performance in England,
to secure copyright in 1879.
The Society performed " Hit the deck" in 1938 for their Jubilee.
In 1939 they staged "No No Nanette" at the Torquay Pavillion.
Then Came World war II.
The Society continued with "Iolanthe" in 1947 and continued
with yearly performances at the Palce Avenue theatre until 1968.
When the third and final grouping to date dawned with the creation of
a new larger Festival Theatre in Paignton seatin 1490.
Here at last was a venue destined to present any modern show available
and Paignton Operatic took full advantage starting with a newly released
"Oliver" in 1968, followed by "Hello Dolly".
1970, saw " The Sound of Music" which broke all previous box
office records and we were able to put out The House Full sign.
This was followed by several other shows including "Fiddler on the
Roof" , "My Fair Lady", "Oklahoma" and so on were
tackled and in support 70 - 80 Thousand people paid to see the first ten
new shows presented to the public of Torbay by Paignton Operatic and indeed
came from Plymouth, Cornwall and other parts of the country.
In 1979 the Centenary performance of "The Pirates of Penzance"
was staged yet again at the Palace Avenue Theatre. Then back to the festival
Theatre for "Carousel" in 1980 and as so continued with many
more successes.
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