The Yeomen of the Guard or, The Merryman and His Maid

Winchester: Warren and Son, Ltd, 1921. Paperback. Good. Paperback. 10 1/4" X 5 1/4". Unpaginated. Wear to pictorial paper wraps with foxing and toning to covers and light creasing to corners and edges. Pages are clean and unmarked. Binding is sound. With black-and-white photographs throughout. An overall solid copy of this theater program from the Winchester Amateur Operatic Society's performance of The Yeomen of the Guard.

ABOUT THE WINCHESTER AMATEUR OPERATIC SOCIETY:
The origins of the Winchester Amateur Operatic Society (WAOS), which subsequently became the Winchester Operatic Society (WOS) and then as we are now known - Winchester (truncated) Musicals and Opera Society (WMOS) are intriguing, as there are several photographs in the archive of the society dated 1902, showing children in costume, possibly performing in Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Iolanthe', and an early newspaper cutting also suggests that our Society was formed as early as 1901.



But apart from these early documents, there is no further evidence of this earlier version of the Society. However, what is certain, is that the first formal meeting of the Society was called by Mr Whitwam and Mr Elsmere on 22 Nov 1912 (possibly seated in the centre of the photograph above), when our Society was given its first official name and a committee appointed to draw up the rules. The objects of the Society were to ‘foster the combined arts of music and drama and encourage their appreciation by an annual operatic production'. Our first show, 'The Pirates of Penzance', took place in May the following spring, which we performed at what became our regular venue of The Guildhall in The Broadway. This set a trend for mainly putting on G&S operettas, which we have gradually departed from as the years have passed by. There were no productions from 1915-19 and from 1940-46, owing to the First and Second World Wars, but apart from these gaps we have put on a production (or two from 1979) every year since we were founded. And from 1967 we also performed an additional annual concert for several years.(wmos.org). (Inventory #: 9598)