ABSTRACT
On the evening of Friday 11 September 1857, Signors Toolerini and Irvingetti, standing together at the front of the stage of the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, sang a duet of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Their voices, curiously, were less operatic than their body language, but nobody minded, for they were supported by a shrill of actresses and one of the best orchestras a theatre could boast. Under a young maestro, Harry Loveday, it commanded the musical repertoire of one of Britain's finest stock companies in the middle of the nineteenth century. From opera to farce, time after time, all had to be served and supported, including the sort of entertainment in which Signors Toolerini and Irvingetti appeared – opera and farce in bizarre combination. Loveday himself had composed some of the score and had given the rest new settings. Nearby, among the string-players, sat his brother George; and above, across the footlights, stood Toolerini and Irvingetti, to whom he smiled in encouragement as he signalled another cue.
