Victoria Hall

The Victoria Hall is best known as the venue for a terrible fire tragedy in which 183 children died, the memorial to which marks the original site of the hall, which was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in 1941.

In 1898, the Victoria Hall was the venue for the world premier of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’, part of a series of compositions based on Longfellow’s famous poem. Coleridge-Taylor was only 23 years old at the time, but conducted his cantata to great acclaim.

Hailed as a twentieth-century musical genius, Coleridge-Taylor broke many societal norms. Conscious of his African descent, his compositions were influenced by his cultural heritage. His work was so well received, he was even invited to the Whitehouse in 1904 by President Theodore Roosevelt as a result of the popularity of this first work, ‘Hiaiwatha’s Wedding Feast.’

They heard it here first, in Sunderland. The Musical Times reported:

‘Like Tschaïkowsky in his most characteristic movements, there is a certain barbaric opulence about his music, an absence of any apparent labour, and a passionate energy that are in perfect keeping with the subject. Dvorák, who has anticipated him in treating of the ‘forest primeval’, has hardly a greater wealth of fresh melodic ideas.’

The Sunderland Echo was similarly enthusiastic about the quality of Coleridge-Taylor’s composition, but where their report mentioned the ‘barbaric’, it is not in connection with an established, white composer, but instead is tinged with racism:

‘When one remembered the African blood which coursed through the composer’s veins, one could appreciate more fully the wild bursts of barbaric harmony which occasionally characterised the work.’