[An archive of 94 theatre programmes and libretti]

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12mo, 8vo, and quarto. The majority preserved within original publisher's wrappers. An extensive archive of theatrical publications and ephemera, emanating from the recently dispersed library of Howth Castle, County Dublin, seat of the Gaisford-St. Lawrence family, comprised of theatre programmes and libretti, representing productions spanning from the late 1820s up to the 1930s, both domestic and Continental in origin. The 94 individual publications comprehend: Eight playscripts and libretti printed in Paris between, including an 1828 edition of Thà aulon and Choquart's comic vaudeville Monsieur Jovial, ou, l'huissier-chansonnier (1827), and an 1882 issue of Charles Gounod's five-act opera Faust, set to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carrà from Carrà 's play Faust et Marguerite. 15 Italian productions, variously printed at Rome, Milan, Florence, and Naples in the latter half of the nineteenth century, including an 1848 Neapolitan edition of Verdi's four-act opera Nabucodonosor, composed to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, first performed at La Scala in Milan 9th March 1842; and a programme to accompany the first performance of Verdi's Attila at La Fenice in Venice 17th March 1846. An Italian language edition, printed at Barcelona in 1845, of Jacopo Ferretti's libretto Eran due or son tre (1834). 70 theatre programmes, operas, and Italian-language libretti printed in London, spanning the century between the 1830s and 1930s, including: 15 issued in the 1870s as a part of 'Davidson's Musical Opera-Books' series published in conjunction with performances at 'London's Italian Opera Houses', of productions of, inter alia, Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Bizet's Carmen, and Mozart's Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute, each with a parallel English translation and 'the music of the principal airs'. The first appearance in print of the libretti for five Gilbert and Sullivan productions: Patience (1881), Princess Ida (1884), The Mikado (1885), The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), and Utopia (1893). A magazine-programme for a run of performances at the Shaftesbury Theatre in 1926 of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (1904) - a production with which Barrie was directly involved - with Dorothy Dickson in the lead role. A run of 12 programmes for the 1925/26, 1926/27 seasons at the The Old Vic, including 11 productions of Shakespeare's plays, all notably featuring leading Shakespearean actor Baliol Holloway (d. 1967). Notable members of the Gaisford-St. Lawrence family included Thomas Gaisford (1789-1855), English classical scholar, sometime curator of the Bodliean Library, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, and Dean of Christ Church. Gaisfordâ s eldest son, Thomas Gaisford of Offington, Sussex (1816-1898), British Army officer, married in 1859 as his second (of three) wives Lady Emily St Lawrence (d. 1868), eldest daughter of the third Earl of Howth. Their eldest surviving son, Royal Navy officer Julian Charles Gaisford-St Lawrence (1862-1932), succeeded in 1909 his uncle the fourth and last Earl of Howth and came to reside at Howth Castle in Co. Dublin. A rare opportunity to acquire an ephemeral archive, which not only exemplifies the theatrical passions of a single family across least three generations, but documents the evolution of nineteenth century stage production, charts the popular progress of Italian-language libretti in both Britain and on the Continent, and exhibits the situation of English theatre prior to the post-war dominance of television and film. Seller Inventory # AQ25079

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