Lilian Baylis: The Visionary Impresario

Baird, Kenneth and Hamer, Laura (2025). Lilian Baylis: The Visionary Impresario. In: Hamer, Laura and Minors, Helen Julia eds. The Routledge Companion to Women and Musical Leadership: The Nineteenth Century and Beyond. New York: Routledge, pp. 127–140.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003024767-12

Abstract

Lilian Baylis (1874–1937) was one of the most influential impresarios in the history of the performing arts in Britain. We assert that through her work over the first decades of the twentieth century she was the architect for the creation of some of the UK's most important performing companies. Baylis died on 25 November 1937. In an appreciation the following day, The Manchester Guardian was clear about her contribution:

Miss Lilian Baylis . . . has left the most enduring memory. She made the Old Vic almost the one theatre in Britain to which an Englishman of cultivated tastes could go without first looking to see what was being played there – though not without first booking his seat. Her productions of Shakespeare did more than anything else to rescue our greatest dramatist from the hands of the unscrupulous actor-managers and to save him from the uncomfortable pedestal on which bardolaters had set him. It is significant that when this year controversy arose on the proposal to build a national theatre not only did Miss Baylis claim that she and her company were the national theatre but that many eminent authorities were ready to agree with her. Her work for opera was equally valiant, though its success was limited by the greater difficulties which surrounded it; the production of opera is an expensive pleasure, for which the English have always been unwilling to pay. Though Miss Baylis's name will always be connected with the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells theatres in London, she did not forget that London was not England. She sent a company to dance the ballets in the Northern cities and this year made it possible for Buxton to stage a dramatic festival of the highest quality. If she had lived longer this practical missionary of the theatre might have brought light into many dark places. 1

In this chapter, we trace Baylis’ career, paying particular attention to her ground-breaking innovations at the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells Theatres and role in establishing British ballet, and argue that her work laid the foundations for the creation of the National Theatre, English National Opera, The Royal Ballet, and Birmingham Royal Ballet.