ABSTRACT
At one o’clock on the afternoon of Saturday 15 December 1888 Mrs. D’Oyly Carte, the former Helen Lenoir, laid the foundation stone of Carte’s new theatre at Cambridge Circus. Also attending the ceremony were Gilbert, Sullivan, Thomas Collcutt who was to be the main architect and G. H. Holloway the construction consultant. In a cavity beneath the foundation stone was left a bottle containing a copy of The Times, a bag of silver coins, and a parchment document commemorating the occasion and listing names of those present. Carte’s original plan had been to have a larger theatre housing the Gilbert and Sullivan operas while leasing the Savoy to others. Gilbert thought it stupid to remove the ‘Savoy Operas’ from the Savoy. For Sullivan this theatre was to be where serious opera by him and other British composers would be staged, while for Gilbert it was the thin end of a wedge that would become a rift between him and his erstwhile partners.
