1897 - Theater, Film

Theater, Film

Theater: John Gabriel Borkman by Henrik Ibsen 1/10 at Helsingfors; The Seats of the Mighty 4/28 at London's newly-opened Her Majesty's Theatre, built by Herbert Beerbohm Tree; The Little Minister by James M. Barrie 9/27 at New York's Empire Theater, with Salt Lake City-born actress Maude Adams (originally Maude Kiskadden), 25, who has adopted her mother's maiden name, 300 perfs.; The Devil's Disciple by George Bernard Shaw 10/4 at New York's Fifth Avenue Theater, with Richard Mansfield, 64 perfs.; The Liars by Henry Arthur Jones 10/6 at London's Criterion Theatre; A Marriage of Convenience by English playwright Sydney Grundy, 49, 11/8 at New York's Empire Theater, with John Drew, New York-born actress Elsie DeWolfe (originally Ella Anderson de Wolfe), 31 (Grundy's play about Louis XV opened earlier in the year at London's Haymarket Theatre); The Bombastic Actors (La farándula) by Jacinto Benevente 11/30 at Madrid's Teatro da Lara; Cyrano de Bergerac by French playwright Edmond Rostand, 29, 12/28 at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin, Paris, 200 perfs.

The Théâtre du Grand Guignol opens in Montmartre under the direction of Paris theatrical manager Oscar Metenier, 38, whose bloodcurdling horror plays will overshadow his farces (see 1815).

Costa Rica's Teatro Nacional opens at San José October 21 with 1,050 seats—the largest structure in the capital except for the cathedral. Miffed because Adelina Patti did not perform at San José on her 1890 tour, coffee merchants raised export taxes to finance the design by Belgian architects and construction by German architects of the magnificent theater in cast iron and Italian marble with a sandstone façade, Italianate arched windows, marble columns, and frescoes (by Milanese painter Aleardo Villa) depicting coffee and banana production.

The Orpheum Circuit is founded by German-born theatrical promoter Gustav Walter, who arrived at San Francisco in 1874, opened the Orpheum Theater in 1887 with a 22-piece Hungarian electrical orchestra, introduced Weber and Fields of New York to California 2 years later, leased Child's Opera House at Los Angeles last year, opened a booking office at Chicago, and now opens a third theater at Kansas City. Walter will die next year on his return from a tour of Europe in search of new talent.