Savoy Theatre

The Savoy Theatre stands on a site that once held the grand medieval Savoy Palace. In eighteen eighty-one, the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte transformed this space into a revolutionary home for the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. He designed the theatre to be a comfortable, modern escape from the foul air and intense heat caused by the gas lighting common in other venues at the time. To solve this, he made the Savoy the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electricity. The system was so new and unproven that he kept a gas lighting setup in place as a backup, just in case the experimental bulbs failed.