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London's stages and concert rooms: the West End houses and the playhouses that make their own shows, the grand halls, the churches with a musical life, the jazz basements, the comedy clubs, the clubs proper, the rooms above pubs where things start, and the booth on Leicester Square that sells off what the West End has not. What is on is listed under each venue, and in What's On.
What is on at them this week is in What's On: Performance
The first public building in the world lit entirely by electric light, built for Gilbert and Sullivan and rebuilt twice since.
West EndPlayhousesWorth it for the building
Richard D'Oyly Carte had it built to stage Gilbert and Sullivan, and C. J. Phipps opened it on 10 October 1881 with about twelve hundred Swan lamps run off a 120-horsepower generator - the first public building anywhere lit entirely by electricity. The last eight of the Savoy operas had their first nights here, The Mikado and The Gondoliers among them, and the phrase Savoy opera comes from the building rather than the other way round.
Carte's son rebuilt the interior in 1929, Frank A. Tugwell doing the structure and Basil Ionides the decoration, and that is the room you sit in: silvered, geometric and unmistakably of its decade. It burned out completely in February 1990 and William Whitfield put the 1929 design back exactly, reopening in July 1993. About 1,150 seats on three levels, protected at the higher grade, and modern musicals in it now.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.