Prince of Wales Theatre, Sydney
entertainment venue in Sydney (1855-1872)
The Prince of Wales was a theatre in Castlereagh Street, Sydney, New South Wales. It was destroyed by fire and rebuilt twice; the second time as the Theatre Royal.
History
The theatre, near the corner of King and Castlereagh streets, was built for Joseph Wyatt, who had earlier built the Royal Victoria Theatre in Pitt Street, and opened on 12 March 1855 with William Dind his co-manager.
It was designed to accommodate around 3,000 patrons: 1500 in the pit (stalls), 500 in the dress circle; gallery 500 and upper boxes 750.
The first lessee was J. Gordon Griffiths, and the first production was Knowles' The Hunchback, starring Mr and Mrs Waller. As the second large theatre in Sydney it could not attract entrepreneurs and it became, briefly, a casino in 1856.
Wyatt was forced to sell the theatre in 1858; he was declared insolvent and died 19 July 1860. The theatre was destroyed by fire on the morning of 3 October 1860. It started at Holmes's bakery adjoining; three people died as a result of a wall of the burning theatre collapsing.
It was rebuilt as the Prince of Wales Opera House by Robert Fitzgerald and opened on 23 May 1863 with Flotow's Martha, played by Lyster's Opera Company.
“Prince of Wales Theatre, Sydney” enters the record as entertainment venue in Sydney (1855-1872). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Prince, Wales and Theatre can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Prince of Wales Theatre, Sydney” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.