Che Guevara and the suffering Christ

Ernesto "Che" Guevara 1928 – 1967 was the revolutionary hero of my generation. Born and educated in Argentina, this physician, author, military leader and diplomat became the major intellectual of the Cuban Revolution. And after the Cuban Revolution in 1958-9, Guevara played a number of critical roles in the new government of Fidel Castro.

Alborta's post mortem photo of Guevara, 1967

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It was inevitable that right wing leaders throughout South America would seek Guevara wherever he went, presumably to kill him once and for all. The end came when Guevara's plan for fomenting revolution in Bolivia failed in 1967. A Cuban exile, working as a CIA Special Activities Division operative, advised Bolivian troops during the hunt for Guevara in October of that year. Bolivian President René Barrientos immediately ordered that Guevara be executed, but that his orders had to be denied.

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It is probable that Che would have been compared to Christ being taken down from the cross in any case. He was in his 30s when he died, he had long hair and a beard, and he gave his life for the cause of the working class and the peasants in a deeply Catholic country. And probably his image would only grown in its inspiration – that change would arrive in Bolivia and that the poor could eventually live in dignity.
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But a  photograph emerged that seemed to me to be a powerful visual and artistic reminder of Che’s redemptive powers.  After his execution, Guevara's body was lashed to the landing skids of a helicopter and flown to nearby Vallegrande, where photographs were taken of him lying on a concrete slab in a dismal laundry room. As hundreds of weeping locals filed past the body, many of these deeply Catholic people believed that Guevara's corpse was Christ-like in its hideous suffering. Freddie Alborta was the photographer who immortalised this last scene.

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I am not sure how Alborta’s post-mortem photograph of Che Guevara was released, but English art critic John Berger observed that it resembled two famous paintings: Rembrandt's very large work, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp 1632 and Andrea Mantegna's smaller Lamentation over the Dead Christ 1490. Berger had published many humanist essays and reviews in the New Statesman, and his strongly stated opinions on modern art made him a controversial and somewhat political figure. An early collection of essays, Permanent Red, made a clear statement of his own political commitments.
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Rembrandt, Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, 1632, Royal Gallery Mauritshuis.

Mantegna, Lamentation over the Dead Christ, 1490, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.
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The powerful Catholic Church did little to condemn the greed of the ruling class in South America; instead of promoting social change and justice, it opted for the good order of the status quo. So it is doubly confusing for a humanist left wing art critic to be citing classical paintings in relation to a Marxist revolutionary from South America. However I think he was correct.

John Hess was also interested in the representation of Che Guevara as Christ, particularly following the publication of the post mortem photo in 1967. He quoted an Argentinian film maker who interviewed Freddy Alborta decades later and drew out the circumstances of the photograph. What were Alborta’s feelings and impressions? Did he know of John Berger’s interpretations of Alborta’s own photo?

Alborta did not, but he was very aware that this was not simple photo journalism. The photographer said he worked very carefully, knowing that he was in the presence of an already legendary figure, a Christ figure even, and that such a moment comes once in a life time.

Read: John Berger "Che Guevara: the moral factor", in The Urban Review, Volume 8, Number 3, September, 1975

Could Violet Gibson have saved Italy from Fascism? Violet who?

Frances Stonor Saunders wrote The Woman Who Shot Mussolini, published by Metropolitan Books earlier this year: 2010. I don’t pretend to be a modern history scholar, but I did think I would have heard of a major event like the attempted assassination of one of the 20th century’s great dictators in 1926. By a woman, no less!

Prime Minister of Italy, Benito Mussolini

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Violet Gibson (1876–1956) was the daughter of British aristocracy. In fact her father, 1st Baron Ashbourne, was actually Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Raised in the Protestant staunchness of late C19th Ireland, young Violet did not make her parents happy. She was always a bit weird religiously, trying out mysticism and theosophy before ending up in the bosom of the Catholic Church. And her older brother Willie was seen as even more treacherous. The heir to his father's title, Willie became a Catholic and a supporter of Irish Home Rule, and was promptly disinherited by the family.

Apart from upholding what was seen as an extreme religious position, Violet had two other “strikes” against her. She had dabbled with the peace movement and she had a very worrying psychiatric history. Socially isolated from her family and anyone else who might have seen the warning signs, there were certainly a number of suicide attempts and probably as many fearsome assaults on other people.

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) started his political career with dignity, but he was on his way to becoming a rather nasty dictator by the inter-war period. Did Violet see the future and decide to save Italy and the world from a Fascist dictatorship in Italy? If so, in 1926 she was well out of step with Winston Churchill and other senior decision-makers back in Britain. Centre of Criminology Library Blog stated that Italy's prime minister was one of that country's great 1920s tourist attractions! The King of England even decorated Mussolini with the Order of the Bath!

In April 1926 Mussolini was in a car after leaving an assembly of the International Congress of Surgeons, to whom he had delivered a warm speech about modern medicine. Violet Gibson, who loved Italy and was there staying for a while in a convent, approached Mussolini closely and shot at him several times with a pistol. She hit him at least twice but Mussolini’s wounds were not serious and after he was bandaged up, he continued on his parade duties. Gibson’s life was more in danger than her target’s – she was only saved from an angry mob by Italian police.

Gibson's police record in Italy

Why did a middle aged Anglo-Irish aristocrat try to assassinate Mussolini? Either she was a lunatic, answering to private voices in her head about saving the true Catholic Church. Or she was part of a larger crusade to save Italy from descending the same fascist path as Spain and Germany.

Decades later, Peter Popham reported that Gibson travelled to Rome with the original intention of murdering the Pope, but then changed her plan. Blog de study508 agreed, since Violet told her brother Willie that Pope Pius XI had betrayed the Church and should be killed. If both these blogs were correct, it suggests that Gibson was extremely angry, but that her anger was at best unfocused and unplanned.
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Clearly the Italian authorities in 1926 must have believed she worked alone, since Gibson was quickly deported back to Britain after being released without charge. She spent the rest of her life in an expensive mental asylum, St Andrew's Hospital in Northampton, in her birth town. The irony was that she wanted to live out her life in a Catholic convent. In 1956 she was finally buried in Kingsthorpe Cemetery, Northampton, aged 80 years.

Saunders does not give a definitive conclusion. The mix of spiritualism, mysticism and Catholicism seemed to have been a potent and combustible mixture for Violet. She had discovered a religious vocation that required her to make a sacrifice of her own life, in her stand against ,,, what? Fascism? Yet the large question still hovers over Gibson’s attempt on Mussolini’s life. Had she made the attempt in 1940 when Italy declared war on Britain and France, she might not have been declared insane. Instead Gibson might have been given a seat in Parliament, with the grateful thanks of the nation.

Saunder's book

Since reviewing Saunders book, I found A Blog About History's article on the secret diaries of Benito Mussolini. Mussolini apparently hid a set of secret diaries in an Italian hillside and ordered them not to be opened until 2025. The documents may or may not be secret diaries and Mussolini may or may not have written about Violet Gibson. But one point was fascinating. The blog noted a theory among some Italian historians - that Mussolini was executed as part of an MI6 plot to spare Britain embarrassment about the  closeness between Benito Mussolini and Winston Churchill.

Sad story of the English parsonage

A new book has been written by Anthony Jennings called The Old Rectory: the Story of the English Parsonage, and published by Continuum in 2009.

Here's the publisher’s description first. “This is a comprehensive survey of the social, historical and architectural importance of the English parsonage and its future. Traditional English rectories and vicarages, sold out of service by the Church of England, have become uniquely desirable to property buyers and are now cherished by their new private owners. They combine many coveted qualities: their fine architecture, an air of civilisation, charm and character, traditional values and quality of essential Englishness which they evoke; their large gardens and often splendidly rural locations.

The Old Rectory, Oswaldkirk, North Yorkshire

Despite their historical, social and architectural importance, there is no comprehensive book about them currently in print. This book examines the place of rectories and vicarages in the history of the Church and of England, and traces their evolution through the centuries. It looks at their many and varied styles of architecture, profiling some individual houses and highlighting some of the most architecturally outstanding and interesting ones. It is handsomely illustrated with quality photographs. Although rectories and vicarages have had their ups and downs throughout history, the period from the early C20th to the present day has posed perhaps the greatest challenge: why, if they are so desirable, has the Church of England been selling off its finest houses? The Old Rectory examines the contribution to our culture made by the clerical families who occupied these houses, and looks at some of the famous people and eccentrics who have been associated with them”.

The author has a vested interest in the topic. Written by the director of Save Our Parsonages, this book looks at the many issues concerned with selling-off, rural retreat and the future of the countryside community. There is nothing wrong with having a passion for one’s topic – I just want readers to know up front.

Old Rectory, Bygrave Herts

Reviewers were impressed with Jenning’s careful documentation and despairing of the situation in the C21st. Lucinda Lambton, for example, wrote: ‘The great 20th-century sell-off’, as it is described by Jennings, will be to the church’s eternal detriment, and short of restoring them all to their holy roles, we could have no better memorial to their importance than this book; a delightful yet doom-ridden progress through England’s cultural and spiritual, social and architectural history. Densely comprehensive, it is also exhilarating, moving and poetic, thoroughly enjoyable and important, yet always deeply depressing that such policy should have been allowed to come to pass — and in the name of the church.
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Timothy Brittain-Catlin, himself the author of The English Parsonage in the Early Nineteenth Century, reviewed the book in Country Life magazine, 27th Jan 2010. “re English parsonages. Their downscaling and downgrading was partly the result of a very local phenomenon: the rise of the evangelical wing of the Church of England, with its aggressively antagonistic stance towards old buildings. I know of an evangelical bible called Re-pitching the Tent which calls for the destruction of fine old churches, let along parsonages. So there is yet another sense in which the story of the parsonage is the story of England: it’s the age-old tale of Roundheads versus Cavaliers, of Puritans versus the pleasure-seekers.”

Old Rectory Haselbech, Northamptonshire

The rise of the evangelical wing of the Church of England, and its impact on the maintenance and ownership of old buildings, was total new to me. If people would like to pursue to topic, I recommend they read The English Parsonage in the Early Nineteenth Century (and not The Old Rectory: the Story of the English Parsonage),

Some parsonages were Queen Anne or early Georgian. Hailsham Grange vicarage was built in c1705 in the Queen Anne architectural style. The materials used were typical of this part of East Sussex: a mixture of red and grey bricks laid in the Flemish bond manner giving a chequered effect, in contrast to the rubbed brick dressings. Situated in the market town of Hailsham, the vicarage was located within close walking distance of the much older parish church, St Mary’s East Sussex. Today the vicarage is a lovely B & B, but for true joy, visitors must see the formal gardens – patterned box parterres and stilt hedges.

And examine Haselbech which is a small pretty Northamptonshire village with a 13th century church at its heart. The Old Rectory Haselbech was built in 1728, mainly with local ironstone and brick, and we know the building was substantially altered and extended in Victorian times. The 1-acre garden overlooks unspoilt farmland and was redesigned by the present owners in 1998, very much in sympathy with the house and surroundings.

Hailsham Grange, East Sussex

Some were early or mid Victorian. Victorian / Edwardian Paintings alerted us to a Cornish vicarage near Tintagel which comes with a deconsecrated 1930s chapel and a dovecote. Then I recently found the totally relevant history of The Old Rectory in Thurgarton. In The House Historian, you can find when this old rectory was built (1848), who lived in there for the first 70 years, what the relationship between the rectory and the village was, and what happened to the building when it became surplus to requirements.

The Old Rectory in Whitwell in the very south of the Isle of Wight dated to 1868: it was built in Gothic style with arched windows, and was influenced by the work of Ruskin and Pugin. Naturally it was located close enough to the church so that the resident family would have easy access to work, and so that locals would have easy access to the minister. What might differentiate the splendid Whitwell parsonage from other similar buildings was that it was paid for from the private funds of the local Rector back in the 1860s. I assume the very large gardens were as gorgeous in the 19th century as they are in the 21st century.

Old Rectory, Whitwell, Isle of Wight

Another later Victorian vicarage, built in the Gothic style, was more colourful and attractive than Whitwell: The Old Rectory in Bygrave Herts. Built in c1870, the white brick exterior had chequered red and black brick dressings. On each of the two storeys, packed with bedrooms, there were groups of lancets with black, white and red brick gauged arches. An outbuilding, probably a dairy, had twin lancets and plank doors - everything a large clerical family could have needed.

The Fast Set in Edwardian times

Victorian History, one of my favourite blogs, was writing about the social life of the upper classes in Victorian times which revolved around The Season. While the upper classes often had an activity-packed social life in the country, it was in the three months that they generally spent in London that the most impressive entertainments were on offer. The dinners, parties, balls, weekend visits to other peoples' homes, presentation of daughters to the royal court and fabulous clothes must have been amazing to watch. And fearfully expensive. 

But were Edwardian times any different, at least for the very well heeled? You will remember a book I loved called The Fast Set: the World of Edwardian Racing. George Plumptre wrote about society families meeting in Hyde Park London, a subject I had been very interested in just a few months ago. On a topic that had been quite difficult to research, I found the following:

"Before the emergence of the Prince of Wales and his circle, Society's activities had been largely confined to London. Here the pace was stepped up rapidly; the occasional balls and tedious levees and garden parties being replaced by a far more demanding round of entertainment for which opulence, rather than taste, was the watchword.

During the day, teatime was the occasion for private calls, normally because wives could entertain their lovers without fearing that their husbands might barge in at any moment, and the men could visit their mistresses without anyone wondering where they had been. Equally important was the daily parade in Hyde Park's Rotten Row, which by the 1880s had become a formal ritual. Here one walked, drove or rode, and appearance was all important.

West Carriage Drive, Hyde Park, Looking onto the Coalbrookdale Gate,

painted by Sir Robert Ponsonby Stapes, date?

Daisy Warwick, one of the prominent figures in the parade, described the scene in her memoirs. 'Late afternoon in Hyde Park meant state carriages, with beautifully dressed occupants, pulled up under the trees. It was not etiquette to handle the reins oneself in the afternoon, so we sat on rows of chairs chatting and behaving as if the world we knew, bounded by the Smart Set, was a fixed orbit. As if London, our London, was a place of select social enjoyment for the Circle. As if nothing could change in this best of delightful worlds. Then there would be the clatter of faster horses, and down this mile of drive came the well-known royal carriage with the beautiful Alexandra, Princess of Wales, bowing right and left as only she could bow, and hats were raised and knees curtsied before seats were resumed and interrupted chatter continued'".

But nowhere did Plumptre mention church parades or sabbath day respectability! Instead he talked about the fortune that aristocratic owners spent on breeding, training and racing thoroughbred horses. Led by the fun-loving Prince of Wales and later King Edward VII, high society linked their lavish house parties with the main meetings at Ascot, Epsom, Goodwood and Newmarket. It became as important to dress beautifully for Derby Day, and to entertain dozens of one's friends at a lavish luncheon at the race course, as the Victorians had done for a weekend of shooting and partying at Chatsworth.

The blog Edwardian Promenade added another key element of the activities that amused the fast set. a passion for gambling that overtook them during the 1880s. Baccarat was the initial game of choice and no hostess threw a country house party without a baccarat game. The Prince of Wales was a particular fan of this illegal card game, and he set the standard! But baccarat was eventually discontinued in society, and just as quickly as that went out, bridge came in. The craze swept women in particular, and in the pre-WW1 years, the conversation of the most obsessed centered around bridge.

This leads me to my favourite Plumptre photo, a group of society women at the races. While they certainly  seemed to be posing in positions that would best show off their gorgeous dresses and the men were of course in very attractive morning suits, perhaps they really loved to bet. They seemed to be showing an intelligent interest in the form guides.

Edzell Mansion & the incomparable Dame Nellie Melba

Melbourne's classiest post-code was always, and still is Toorak. You need to know that.

Edzell House, one of Toorak's grandest mansions, was superbly located on a very well elevated site on the southern bank of the Yarra River. It was originally designed by the architects Reed, Smart and Tappin in 1892 for the owner James Cooper Stewart (1836-1919). We know that Joseph Reed was one of Melbourne's most distinguished architects; he was responsible for many important buildings, including the Public Library, Melbourne Town Hall and Rippon Lea. But James Stewart was no slouch himself. He was a prominent Melbourne lawyer, alderman of the Melbourne City Council and a mayor during the 1880s.

James Cooper Stewart, Lord Major of Melbourne, 1885-6

Edzell was a red brick house with extensive half-timbered gabling, sometimes described as the Queen Anne Revival style. But I don’t find "Queen Anne" a totally useful style label for Australian architecture. So it might be more helpful to say Edzell was a transitional house, no longer Victorian and clearly predictive of Australia's own Federation style in the early C20th. The house had pattern tiles and terracotta ridging and two asymmetrical corner towers, with turrets, facing the river. You can see the prominent red brick chimneys with terracotta tops in the photo. The splendid dining room featured panelled timber ceiling and dado, embossed floral pattern wall paper and a panelled, carved timber mantel.

Edzell in Toorak, built 1892, extended 1917

In 1916 George Russell bought the house. Within a year the noted Arts and Crafts architect Walter Richmond Butler designed extensive but sympathetic external additions and a garden for Russell. A large ballroom was added, and this continued the Tudor manner with its panelled ceiling and dado. The main veranda was replaced with a half-timbered patterned brick balustrade and on the south the original gables were extended in the same pattern over a new brick veranda. By the end of WW1, there were more than 30 rooms in this mansion, some of which you can see.

Dame Nellie Melba (1861-1931) was the first Australian to achieve international recognition as an opera soprano. In 1887 Melba had made her Covent Garden début, without a raging success. But once she took the role of Donizetti's Lucia in 1888, the world was hers. Back home in Australia, she was bigger than our most famous race horses; bigger even than football stars.

In 1909 Melba bought property at Coldstream, a small town outside Melbourne, and she had Coombe Cottage built within a few years. Melba also set up a music school in Richmond which she later merged into the Melbourne Conservatorium. It is interesting that of all the architects in Melbourne, she selected Walter Butler to design her Italianate lodge and gate-house at Coombe Cottage. Presumably she saw Butler’s renovations at Edzell and gave him the commission.

It would be interesting to know who invited the elderly Dame Nellie Melba to give small concerts in Edzell’s splendid music rooms during the 1920s and why she agreed. The house was located on an elevated site which is one of the most outstanding on the south bank of the Yarra River. Its impressive vistas were complemented by Butler's extensive and lush garden, some of which you can still see in current photos. Perhaps Dame Nellie Melba loved the heroic scenery.

Dame Nellie Melba

The next owner of the mansion was Mrs Rose Krantz, mother in law of the famous pianist Jacob Jascha Spivakovsky 1896-1970. Jascha and his even more famous brother, violinist Nathan Tossy Spivakovsky 1906-98, had been learning music and playing in Berlin, while the Krantzes were safely settled in Australia. In 1930 the two brothers and cellist Edmund Kurtz formed the Spivakovsky-Kurtz Trio and happened to be on a musical  tour of Australia in 1933 when the Nazi Party took power in Germany. Needless to say the two brothers did not return to Europe, plus they managed to get their two other musical brothers to Australia later in the 1930s. Australian culture was deeply indebted to this migrant family.

By the time Jascha inherited Edzell from his parents in 1948, other famous musicians gave concerts there. The historicised English architecture made the house perfect for concerts, both acoustically and thematically. Somehow Spivakovsky had the musical genius to entice them to his home.

Edzell House retains many of its original features including rich timber panelling and delicate lead lighting. The grandest of rooms, eg the dining and music room, are still intact. The gardens of most other large C19th houses have either been redeveloped or substantially reduced in size, but not here. Heritage-listed Edzell House has been listed for sale by Jascha Spivakovsky’s architect son, Michael.

Paul Delaroche - paintings lost and later found

The unexpected locating of a famous painting, thought lost forever, is the sort of once-in-a-lifetime event that art historians dream of. And because the subject matter comes from the middle of the 17th century in Britain, I was even more riveted.

London blog described how Paul Delaroche's magnificent work King Charles I Insulted by Cromwell's Soldiers 1837 used to hang in Bridgewater House (built 1847-50).  At that stage, the Earl of Ellesmere had made Bridgewater House very special indeed. It was said to hold one of the finest private picture-galleries in England.

Delaroche, King Charles I Insulted by Cromwell's Soldiers, 1837

But this beautiful house in St James' Park became a near-ruin, destroyed by a bomb during World War Two. So it was always assumed that the painting was destroyed as well. In fact four of the duke’s paintings WERE destroyed.

But some unknown paintings were recently found rolled up in duke's Scottish home, Mertoun House, in the Borders. Tea at Trianon says that when the director of the National Gallery of Scotland asked to see these unknown paintings, they found the Delaroche, to the surprise and delight of everyone. It must have been taken to Scotland for safety, sometime after the bombing of Bridgewater House.

The King Charles painting is huge in both senses. Firstly the work is enormous, just under 4 x 3 metres. Secondly Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) was a major 19th century artist with a passion for important history scenes. He certainly spent time in Britain, studying famous English Old Masters.

Bridgewater House gallery, before and after bombing

The Western Confucian understood that knowing mid 17th century history was important, if the viewer was to understand this painting. He said that Charles I of England's "last years were marked by the English Civil War, in which he fought the forces of the English & Scottish Parliaments, which challenged his attempts to augment his own power, and the Puritans, who were hostile to his religious policies & supposed Catholic sympathies." The Society of King Charles the Martyr, one of the Catholic Societies of the Church of England, was dedicated to and under the patronage of this monarch who held the distinction of being the only person to be canonised by the Church of England after the English Reformation. The Jacobite Heritage may be traced to the reign of Charles I, for the Jacobites of 1688 were the direct successors of the Cavaliers of 1642, as the Whigs were of the Puritans.

In the painting the King, who must have been aware that he was facing his own immediate demise, was casting his eyes contemptuously at badly-behaved Roundhead soldiers. The king was made to look dignified and the Puritans made to look like drinking yobs, reliving a Mocking of Christ theme. So one question remains for me. Whose politics was Delaroche reflecting?

The Composed Gentleman said the latest exhibition at the National Gallery also features the huge The Execution of Lady Jane Grey 1833, another tour de force by Delaroche. This second painting was also believed to have been damaged beyond repair in the 1928 flooding of Tate Gallery’s basement. When the curators found it again in 1973 and realised it could be repaired, it was sent off for major restoration.

Delaroche, Execution of Lady Jane Grey, 1833

I haven't made a fuss of Lady Jane Grey because I have seen this painting published many times. But there were still some important British historical issues that Delaroche, a Frenchman, had to have been aware of. Firstly Frances, Lady Jane Grey's mother, was King Henry VIII's niece, so Frances was perfectly entitled to inherit the crown if King Edward VI died childless and Princess Mary was made illegitimate. Secondly Mary loathed Jane's vigorous Protestantism and had her beheaded as soon as possible as a religious traitor, as well as someone who usurped the crown. Delaroche's Jane died in a beautiful white silk gown, which Leanda de Lisle read as the sacrifice of a virgin martyr. But was she a virgin? And was she a martyr? Would civil war follow, if a Catholic queen came to the throne?

Representing London analysed some of the contradictions in Delaroche's Lady Jane Grey. She suggested Jane's youth and apparent benevolent intentions had been conflated with naivety and resignation to the will of others - casting her as a passive victim rather than a strong teenager. She confidently defended her right to rule over Henry bastard daughter Mary, and proved to be faithful to her religious principles until death.

So is it impressive that both of these large Delaroche works were unveiled, one complete with its shrapnel wounds, in late February 2010. They were part of a major “Painting History Exhibition” at the National Gallery which re-appraised the achievements of that French artist. I am grateful to Art Blog by Bob for noting that the Lady Jane Grey painting had been the sensation of the 1834 Salon Exhibition in Paris. Art history needs to be art-centred to be sure, but it also needs to be historical.

Australia's best and oldest theatres

Two of the finest old theatres in Australia have very similar histories. Theatre Royal in Hobart (1834) and Her Majesty's in Ballarat (1875) are in different states and belong to different decades, but they both carried the cultural hopes of their backers in the earliest days of Australian society.

In 1834 a consortium of Hobart Town’s business leaders was formed with the aim of establishing a permanent theatre for the rapidly expanding colony. Hobart Town must have been a rough old place in colonial days, so their leader brewer Peter Degraves asked the architect, John Lee Archer, to make the new Theatre Royal gorgeous. The foundation stone was laid in 1834 and it was up and running in 1837. Thus Hobart has the honour of being the oldest continually operating theatre in Australia.

Hobart, stalls and balconies

Did the good burghers of Hobart Town mind that the theatre was placed between pubs, brothels, an abattoir, tanneries and tiny dock workers’ cottages? Apparently not, since it was given an impressive neoclassical façade and a charming interior (rebuilt after destruction by fire in 1984).

However there was a price to pay. The entertainment ranged from traditional music hall to nasty cockfights. Worse still, the theatre’s own history tells, a sleazy tavern operated beneath the auditorium. Prostitutes, sailors and general riffraff would enter the pit with tankards full and create all sorts of drama of their own, much to the displeasure of the gentry in the boxes. During intervals, drunken prostitutes could be seen bounding across the seats, heading to the conveniences as fast as they could.

Hobart, renovated front entrance

There were three entrances to the Hobart theatre; a grand front entrance for the well heeled, a door off the side lane for ordinary working families and a tacky entrance from the pub in the basement that opened directly into the cheapest seats.

The addition of the gallery in the 1850s and new decoration to the auditorium in the 1890s made the site attractive. The finest renovations started in 1911 when new balconies were added, the front entrance enlarged and plush red velvet upholstery appeared for the first time. The crème of the entertainment world have trod the boards in the Theatre Royal including Noel Coward, Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and Sybil Thorndike.

Saved from demolition several times, the theatre survived fires, a call to demolish the building during WW2 and decades of wear and tear. The worst threat came in the late 1940s; it was then that Sir Laurence Olivier was among the many to try and save this Hobart institution. Again, when devastating fire in 1984 destroyed much of the stage area and the front of the auditorium, closure seemed imminent. A fundraising appeal was launched to raise the $1 million needed to carry out repairs. The money was raised and the theatre underwent major reconstruction and refurbishment, reopening in March 1986. Today historians love the Theatre Royal, but so do fans of the performing arts.

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Ballarat's Her Majesty's Theatre was first known as the Academy of Music, a name that avoided the rather bawdy associations involved with "theatres". The Academy had a flat floored auditorium suitable for dances and dinners, and a fully equipped stage. It was built in 1875 to supersede Ballarat's Theatre Royal, around the corner in Sturt St. While very grand, the Royal had become outdated and no longer met the technical requirements of the touring companies.

Ballarat auditorium

The Academy was built by an important local family, the Clarkes. Well-to-do citizens wanted Ballarat to be seen as a cultivated regional city, not a gathering place for drunken yahoos. In return for building a prestigious theatre, Sir William Clarke had a guaranteed tenant.

The building of the new theatre was supervised by Clarke's architect, George Diamond Browne. Opened in June 1875, the first production was a comic opera by the French composer Lecocq, La Fille de Madame Angot. It was presented by the Royal Opera Bouffe Company which was run by WS Lyster, Australia's first opera impresario.

Soon after the Academy opened, the large supper room above Lydiard Street was leased to a successful miner who ran it as an art gallery, displaying an excellent collection of European and Australian art-works, including his own tapestries. Within a few years, the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery opened for business (in 1883) and used the supper room as its main display space. Only in 1890 did the art gallery move to its new and permanent home in Lydiard St.

Every famous performer who made his/her way to Ballarat from across Australia and Europe performed at Her Majesty’s. Dame Nellie Melba and the Russian Ballet were the most famous, of course. But when I went on a guided tour of the theatre this May, the guide spent some time showing fabulous posters from the Theatre's Archive Collection on the supper room walls.

Ballarat's main entrance

When Clarke died in 1898, the theatre might well have been sold and destroyed. Fortunately the building was bought by a local consortium, with a view to creating a better, more modern facility. The new owners commissioned Australia's leading theatre architect, William Pitt, to remodel the interior and improve the stage facilities. Pitt, who had worked under Diamond Browne, also designed Melbourne's Princess Theatre. The present layout of the auditorium with sloping floor and double balconies, is Pitt's creation. Wealthier families sat in the splendid comfort of the balconies; the great unwashed sat in the squashier, less padded seats on the ground floor.

Paterson also decorated the dome and proscenium arch with murals. The open dome was removed in 1907 for fire-safety reasons, and was restored only recently in a permanently closed state. The Dress Circle Lobby also dates from 1907.

From the First World War on, the Theatre was increasingly used for cinema presentations. A projection room was built above the dress circle in 1916, and during the silent movie era, a theatre orchestra (or sometimes just an organ) provided the film accompaniment. The theatre was wired for sound in 1930.

Live performances did continue during the cinema years. My personal favourites in the early 1950s was for the annual panto(mime) and then, increasingly, the Theatre was used to stage locally produced musical comedies.

But nothing could overcome the allure of television. No organisation could afford to maintain the upkeep of the building well, so it was given to the City in 1987. The City paid for a major modernisation and reopened Her Majesty's in 1990. The present colour scheme is a recreation of the interior decoration found on wall paper, underneath 100 years of wear and tear.

Caribbean Jewish Communities

Curacao synagogue

The Caribbean covers a number of islands belonging to different European powers over the centuries, including Cuba, Bermuda, Antigua, Aruba, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Curacao, Haiti, Martinique etc etc. The Jewish community that I was most familiar with was in the Dutch Antilles. The Pissarros were descendants of a Sephardi family from Braganza, a medieval fortified Portuguese city near the Spanish border. Camille Pissarro’s father, Frederic, had come from France to St Thomas in the Dutch Antilles in 1824.

Caribbean region

As with any modern Jewish history, the Caribbean communities seemed to have started with the Expulsion from Spain in 1492. Many Jews escaped over the border to Portugal, where people assumed they would be safe, but already within 5 years the Portuguese government expelled their long-standing Jewish citizens and more recently arrived Jews as well.

Many of the Jews found safety in North African nations, in Constantinople and in the Netherlands, but some sailed to Brasil to start over in the booming Portuguese colony. According to Ralph G Bennett, they set up trade routes between Portugal and its colony, and started farming on plantations. With the Inquisition still at full strength, they were forbidden to practice Judaism. The crypto-Jews used secret societies to teach their children about Judaism, thereby sustaining the Jewish faith in Brasil.

During the time the Jews were working on Brasilian plantations, they provided their most lasting benefit to the Caribbean economy. Sugar cane was imported from Madeira in Portugal, and it became the basic foundation of the entire Caribbean economy until the C18th.

Bridgetown Barbados synagogue

The Netherlands didn’t win its independence from Spain until 1581. After years under the control of the Catholic Hapsburgs, the new Dutch government established religious tolerance for all of its citizens, including Protestants and Jews. In 1588, the Spaniards tried to overpower England; the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the British Royal Navy marked the beginning of Spain's downfall as the strongest economy (and army) in Europe. A weakened Spain meant that her colonies were vulnerable to other European powers looking to establish themselves in the New World. Timing was excellent for the Netherlands who hoped to tie up world trade via its Dutch West Indies Company.

When the Dutch wanted to send settlers to colonise their new territory in Brasil, a group of 600 of the Amsterdam Jews sailed off to the new country. By 1642, the Holy Congregation as they called themselves, had some 3,500 members. They prospered in their traditional occupations as traders, merchants and farmers. With the Dutch in power, Jews were no longer required to worship in secret communities, but instead were allowed to freely celebrate their religion. In time, the large numbers of Jews arriving from Brasil marked the beginning of definite Jewish communities in the Caribbean.

Kingston Jamaica synagogue

Great Britain claimed the territory of Surinam in 1665. The British government decided to attract Jewish settlers to Surinam by offering them full British citizenship, recognition of their Sabbath, and ten acres of land to build a synagogue. Life was looking rather pleasant. The Jewish community became successful in Surinam, as in Brasil, as traders and in agriculture. The colony passed to the Dutch, in 1667, and the name was changed to Dutch Guiana.

The very generous rights and privileges given to the Jews of the Caribbean area in the C17th allowed the religious leaders to assume special responsibilities, according to Mordechaï Arbell. The English in Surinam and the Dutch in Cayenne and Curacao permitted the Jews to administer their own lives, to have their own courts of law for litigation among themselves, to maintain their own schools, to build synagogues and to observe the Sabbath. Such rights were available to Jews at that time in very few places in the world.

St Thomas synagogue, interior

A synagogue for Sefardim, the Jews of Spanish or Portuguese descent, was established in Barbados in 1654. It was built in Bridgetown, the capital.

In 1656 in Curacao there were enough Jews to establish a congregation in Willemstad, the Sefardi Congregation named Mikveh Israel, which still operates. They built a synagogue in 1692. Samuel Gruber described the three great wooden barrel vaults that constitute the Curacao ceiling as being shaped like the inverted hulls of ships, ships that carried Jews to this safe haven.

The first synagogue in Surinam was built out of wood in the 1660s at a site upriver from the capitol at Paramaribo. It was surrounded by a town which acted as headquarters for the Jewish plantation owners. A more permanent brick synagogue building was erected in 1685, and a rabbi arrived from London. In 1734, German-speaking Ashkenazi Jews began arriving and in time, they too wanted a synagogue of their own.

The first Jews settled in Martinique at the start of the C17th, establishing themselves in Dutch commercial outposts. In 1667 a synagogue was founded there.

With the foundation of the Mikveh Israel community in Curacao, the community began to expand with the newly arrived Jews from Amsterdam. Then came Jews who arrived after the destruction of the Jewish communities of Cayenne and Pomeroon, and the unsuccessful attempt to have a Jewish settlement on the island of Tobago. A rabbi arrived in Curacao in 1674. In 1683 the same rabbi went to serve in Port Royal, Jamaica. Sadly a disastrous earthquake and tidal wave in 1692 destroyed the city of Port Royal, including its synagogue.

Cuba had the greatest difficulty. Spain's Inquisition covered Cuban society, and it was not officially abolished until 1823. Although Jews have been on Cuba for centuries, they were only lawfully allowed to settle in 1881. Only in 1898 were they finally allowed to publicly worship and built a synagogue for the congregation.

Curacao synagogue, interior

The Caribbean communities are tiny now. The St Thomas Synagogue, which was originally established in 1796 and was later rebuilt several times, now stands as a historic national landmark. In 1996, a small museum was added to the synagogue. The museum chronicles the history of the congregation, and displays artefacts of Jewish history on the island. And recently the Jamaican Jewish Heritage Centre opened next door to the 100-year-old Shaare Shalom synagogue in Kingston. The centre houses a permanent exhibition of Jamaican Jewish history, cases of Jamaican Judaica, archives, theatre and offices for the synagogue and community, most of whose members are in business.

Samuel Gruber's Jewish Art & Monuments discussed an important conference, The Jewish Diaspora of the Caribbean, held in January 2010.