Auction Catalogue

27 August 2020

Starting at 10:00 AM

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British Tokens, Tickets and Passes

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Lot

№ 661

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27 August 2020

Hammer Price:
£130

Theatre and Entertainment, CLERKENWELL, Sadler’s Wells, Aquatic Theatre, Mr Morelli’s Night, Tuesday October 15th 1811, a card ticket for a Box for 4, no.360, signed with initials CJM, 92 x 73mm (Young, Theatres & Circus, p.90, this item). Very fine, rare
£100-£150

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Tickets and Passes of London from the David Young Collection.

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Provenance: Tim Millett FPL 2005 (83); bt April 2005.



Giovanni Morelli (fl. London 1787-1815), originally from Florence, was the well-known Sadler’s Wells prompter, a person of sufficient repute in the world of London theatre at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. Italian minstrels and gymnastic performers arriving in England sought his advice, both when he lived at 18 Oxendon street, off the Haymarket, and then moved with his family to Spa Gardens. A contemporary wrote of him in 1825 ‘[he] was an actor such as the Italian stage has seldom witnessed. He was, I used to think, in his prime, quite upon a par with [Tom] King [the comedian] of Drury Lane Theatre. Like him, he was distinguished for neat articulation, and an unremitting attention to the business of the whole stage’