Electrophone – Harry Heuser

Last night, I felt like an old queen. Granted, that is not an uncommon feeling for me; but the Queen in this case was none other than Victoria, who, in the last years of her reign, enjoyed partaking of live opera without actually having to leave for the theater at which it was presented. Her royal box was a contraption called the Electrophone, a special telephone service that connected subscribers with the theaters from which the sounds of music and drama could be appreciated while being seated in whichever armchair one designated as a listening post. Today, we may be accustomed to live—or, wardrobe malfunctions notwithstanding, very nearly live—broadcasts of sounds as well as images; but last night’s event felt as new and exciting to me as it must have been picking up the electrophone or dialing in to those experimental theater relays during the 1890s and 1920s, respectively.

The caption for the above photograph, taken from the 3rd volume of Radio Broadcast (May to October 1923) reads: “Christian Strohm traveled from Oldes Leben [wherever that might be] to Weimar, Germany, sixty-four years ago to hear the first presentation of an opera composed by Wagner. This year, he heard on a crystal set the same music, broadcasted from WIP, Philadelphia.” What, I wonder, was more thrilling to Herr Strohm or to Queen Victoria: the memory of past pleasures or the reality of present technology?

There we were, gathered at a movie house well over three thousand miles away from the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, taking in a live presentation of Rossini’s La Cenerentola (based on the fairy tale Cinderella or Aschenputtel, its meaner, dirtier, German ancestor, which renowned child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim rightly preferred over the dainty French and glossy American versions). Our local arts center cinema is the first independent movie theater in Wales to subscribe to those high definition broadcasts from the Met (or elsewhere); and, with the exception of the fact that the cameras fail to capture scenes set in near darkness, the transmission was received without a glitch.

True, I wasn’t seated in my favorite chair. I was in an auditorium, with a few dozen others who had come into town for the occasion, presumably undernourished stepchildren of the great cultural centers of the world. This far-fetched ball was a theatrical experience for which one dresses up (and I, for one, enjoys to do so), at which one meets and mingles at intermission.

The last time I saw a theatrical adaptation of Cinderella I was being squirted by a water gun. This time, I was sipping a glass of wine (included in the price of admission). I was very pleased to learn that, based upon the reception, the local cinema is going to book the entire season of opera broadcasts, beginning in October 2009 with Tosca, followed by Aida and Turandot. Tear your eyes out Clorinda and Tisbe. Every Cinderella has her day—and every dreaded midnight is over in a flash . . .

Well, aren’t we rather quaint in our high-tech ways? Getting our entertainment via cable? Subscribing to so-called premium channels? Pshaw, old hat! Even Queen Victoria had a home entertainment center. Called the Electrophone, it was a service that allowed those who signed up to tune in to theatrical performances live—not time delayed—from the London Stage. No need to sit through commercials or settle for anything not worth your while. You simply selected a program, dialed in and an operator standing by connected you to the opera, the theater, or—who’s going to tell—a bawdy music hall.

I became aware of this state-of-the-dramatic arts 19th-century invention while researching for my doctoral study, in which I mentioned it in passing as a precursor to radio’s earliest theatrical entertainments, which relied rather heavily on such stage hook-ups. The BBC Radio 4 Archive Hour presentation of “Down the Wires” provides a thorough—and thoroughly engrossing—introduction to the Electrophone’s dial-up service, which gave audiences access to operatic performances, political speeches, and religious services, piped into the sitting room (or wherever you chose to have it installed).

In this fashion, live theater was being made available to home listeners in the 1880s France and 1890s Britain and America. Matthew Parris’s “Down the Wires” (which is once again available online until Saturday), features rare recordings of early 20th-century performers, reformers, and politicians, including the voice of Teddy Roosevelt.

There are accounts as well of those who used this service, which, in the UK, was available for over twenty-five years, until the wireless cut those wires in the mid-1920s. Now, I’m not the nostalgic sort, really, but right now I’m thinking of all the thrilling plays that I might have caught over the phone (that fickle and fiendish device featured in my latest old-time radio podcast) had I been able to afford the considerable fee of £10 per annum for the service, in addition to the charge for the equipment.

Using my horn-honed imagination, which you’d need to flesh out what the stage business did not render intelligible to the home listener, I might have been able to take in sensational melodramas like The Worst Woman in London (1899) or The Ugliest Woman on Earth (1904)—the original Desperate Housewives. The title character of the former is a siren who blackmails her ex-lover, sets fire to his new home, disguises herself as a man and fights it out with his new bride whom she drags by the hair, onto the rooftops of London, until the virtuous rival manages to escape by tip-toeing to safety on a telegraph wire. Now, with my mind supplying the props, that’s an act fit to go “Down the Wires.”

Tag: Electrophone

Stepchildren Rejoice; or, Fetching a Grand Ball

Curtains Up and "Down the Wires"