history

HISTORY OF THE SOCIETY

When in 1950, Mr Archibald Lusty and a small group of his friends decided to form a new amateur operatic society in Reading there were many Jeremiahs who doubted whether the new venture would survive. But they have been confounded and Reading Operatic Society continues to flourish performing two shows a year to Reading audiences.

The Society opened in 1951 with The Gondoliers, one of Gilbert and Sullivan's well-known and popular comic operettas, in the Temperance Society Hall in West Street, Reading. This, also known as the Palmer Hall, became the Society's first regular home until it moved in 1957 to the old Everyman Theatre in London Street. When, in 1959, the Everyman Theatre closed its doors for the last time the Society was invited to make its home in the Palace Theatre in Cheapside to become the first amateur company to tread its boards since the Royal County Operatic Society was disbanded just after the war.

Unfortunately this also proved to be a short-lived arrangement for after only one show the Palace Theatre was sold for re-development and again the Society had to search for premises in which to perform. At the time the Co-operative Retail Society's Rainbow Theatre in Cheapside was chosen in preference to Reading Town Hall because of the former's better acoustics. There the Society was to remain until 1968 when, the CRS finding that it could no longer afford to maintain a theatre, the Rainbow Theatre was closed.

Thus, when also in that year Reading Borough Council abandoned its plans to convert Yeomanry House in Castle Street into a theatre, Reading not only lost the last proper theatre open to amateur companies in the centre of the town, but also it seemed, hopes for future facilities were dashed. The Town Hall became the only local venue available to the Society and while it performed many successful shows there, like other amateur groups, it moved further afield to play at the Kenton Theatre in Henley-on-Thames.

It took ten years, with the opening of The Hexagon in 1978, before Reading had its own purpose built theatre which also was available to amateur groups. Reading Operatic Society was privileged to be the first amateur company to perform a full-scale theatrical show in this new theatre and chose Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical Show Boat for its debut. Since then, except for a brief excursion back to the Kenton Theatre in 1979 to perform Patience, the Society has regularly entertained Reading audiences with two shows a year in The Hexagon where the Society has established a well-deserved reputation for producing first-class shows worth of any professional theatre company.

A full list of shows which the Society has performed is shown elsewhere on this site.