During her time as manager of the Olympic Theatre Madame Vestris and her designers brought the box set to the English stage. In this style of set there are three walls framed by the proscenium arch whose opening serves as the fourth wall. This innovation, now widely used today, creates the illusion of a room onstage and replaced the use of sliding flats. Its first appearance was in The Conquering Game in 1832. The box set came into its own during the rise of realism because it created a far more realistic interior from which to work.

The Box Set

After gaining her own theatre, Madame Vestris moved to bring the upper class away from opera and back into the theatres. She also set the precedent of not puffing the playbills in the belief that no garish playbill could hide a bad production. She also shortened the length of productions to end by 11 pm in order to bring in a larger audience. One of her greatest reforms however, was bringing order to the backstage world. She turned the Green Room from a raffish world to a place of decorum, where only those in evening dress could appear and her actresses had to be attended to by a page. She also placed emphasis on the rehearsals of her productions and was known for her concerted effort in keeping her productions both fresh and free from imperfections.

Actress, Opera Singer, Producer and Theatre Manager

Madame Lucia Elizabeth Bartolozzi Vestris

The Box Set

Reforms