Her Majesty's Theatre in the context of Pas de Quatre (Perrot)

Herbert Beerbohm Tree (17 December 1852 – 2 July 1917) was an English actor.

Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre in the West End, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the rebuilding, and became manager, of His Majesty's Theatre. Again, he promoted a mix of Shakespeare and classic plays with new works and adaptations of popular novels, giving them spectacular productions in this large house, and often playing leading roles. His wife, actress Helen Maud Holt, often played opposite him and assisted him with management of the theatres.

Pygmalion is a play written by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw in 1912, named after the Greek mythological figure. It was first presented onstage in German translation, premiering at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913. Its English-language premiere took place at His Majesty's Theatre in London's West End in April 1914 and starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree as phonetics professor Henry Higgins and Mrs Patrick Campbell as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle.

Pygmalion became the playwright's most popular play, enduring in popular culture as the heavily adapted and romanticized My Fair Lady (1956 musical and 1964 film).

I masnadieri (The Bandits or The Robbers) is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Andrea Maffei, based on the play Die Räuber by Friedrich von Schiller.As Verdi became more successful in Italy, he began to receive offers from other opera houses outside the country. The London impresario Benjamin Lumley had presented Ernani in 1845 and, as a result of its success, commissioned an opera from the composer which became I masnadieri. It was given its first performance at Her Majesty's Theatre on 22 July 1847 with Verdi conducting the first two performances.

While reasonably successful there and in Italy up to the mid-1860s, the opera disappeared for about ninety years until revived in 1951. It has been staged and filmed several times in the 21st century.

The Romantic ballet is defined primarily by an era in ballet in which the ideas of Romanticism in art and literature influenced the creation of ballets. The era occurred during the early to mid 19th century primarily at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique of the Paris Opera Ballet and Her Majesty's Theatre in London. It is typically considered to have begun with the 1832 début in Paris of the ballerina Marie Taglioni in the ballet La Sylphide, and to have reached its zenith with the premiere of the divertissement Pas de Quatre staged by the Ballet Master Jules Perrot in London in 1845. The Romantic ballet had no immediate end, but rather a slow decline. Arthur Saint-Léon's 1870 ballet Coppélia is considered to be the last work of the Romantic Ballet. Romantic ballet is believed to have been experienced in three main phases: The zenith phase from 1830 to 1840, the decline phase from 1850 to 1880, and the revival phase in the 1890s prior to Diaghilev. Each phase is synonymous with the production of a few specifically stylized ballets.

During this era, the development of pointework, although still at a fairly basic stage, profoundly affected people's perception of the ballerina. Many lithographs of the period show her virtually floating, poised only on the tip of a toe. This idea of weightlessness was capitalised on in ballets such as La Sylphide and Giselle, and the famous leap apparently attempted by Carlotta Grisi in La Péri.

Helen Maud Holt (5 October 1863 – 7 August 1937), professionally known as Mrs Beerbohm Tree and later Lady Tree, was an English actress. She was the wife of the actor Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and the mother of Viola Tree, Felicity Tree and Iris Tree.

After early stage appearances beginning in 1883, Mrs Tree married and established a theatrical partnership with her husband, in which they appeared in revivals of classic plays and productions of new plays, first at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket and then at Her Majesty's Theatre. Her performances in serious roles were well received, but she was most celebrated for her work in comedy, from Shakespeare to new works by Wilde and others.

Saul (HWV 53) is a dramatic oratorio in three acts written by George Frideric Handel with a libretto by Charles Jennens. Taken from the First Book of Samuel, the story of Saul focuses on the first king of Israel's relationship with his eventual successor, David—one which turns from admiration to envy and hatred, ultimately leading to the downfall of the eponymous monarch. The work, which Handel composed in 1738, includes the famous "Dead March", a funeral anthem for Saul and his son Jonathan following their deaths in the Battle of Mount Gilboa at the hands of the Philistines, and some of the composer's most dramatic choral pieces. Saul premiered successfully at the King's Theatre in London on 16 January 1739, and was revived by Handel in subsequent seasons.

Chu Chin Chow is a musical comedy written, produced and directed by Oscar Asche, with music by Frederic Norton, based (with minor embellishments) on the story of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. The piece premièred at His Majesty's Theatre in London on 3 August 1916 and ran for five years and a total of 2,238 performances (more than twice as many as any previous musical), a record that stood for nearly forty years until Salad Days. The show's first American production in New York, with additional lyrics by Arthur Anderson, played for 208 performances in 1917–1918, starring Tyrone Power. It subsequently had successful seasons elsewhere in America and Australia, including in 1919, 1920, 1921 and 1922.

A silent film of the musical, starring Betty Blythe, was produced in 1923 using some of the music. A talking film, with the score intact, was made by the Gainsborough Studios in 1934, with George Robey as Ali Baba, Fritz Kortner as Abu Hasan, Anna May Wong as Zahrat Al-Kulub, Frank Cochrane reprising his stage role of the cobbler, and Laurence Hanray as Kasim. The show toured the British provinces for many years. It returned to London in 1940 and 1941. In 1953, an ice version was produced at the Empire Pool in Wembley, London, starring Tyrone Power, which also toured the provinces and abroad. Occasional productions are still mounted, including one in July 2008 by the Finborough Theatre in London, England.

The Royal Academy of Music was a company founded in February 1719, during George Frideric Handel's residence at Cannons, by a group of aristocrats to secure themselves a constant supply of opera seria. It is not connected to the London conservatoire with the same name, which was founded in 1822.

It commissioned large numbers of new operas from three of the leading composers in Europe: Handel, Attilio Ariosti and Giovanni Bononcini. The Academy took the legal form of a joint-stock corporation under letters patent issued by George I of Great Britain for a term of 21 years with a governor, a deputy governor and at least fifteen directors. The (first) Royal Academy lasted for only nine seasons instead of twenty-one, but both the New or Second Academy and the Opera of the Nobility seem to have operated under its Royal Charter until the expiry of the original term.