The Restoration spectacular, or elaborately staged "machine play", hit the London public stage in the late 17th-century Restoration period, enthralling audiences with action, music, dance, moveable scenery, baroque illusionistic painting, gorgeous costumes, and special effects such as trapdoor tricks, "flying" actors, and fireworks. These shows have always had a bad reputation as a vulgar and commercial threat to the witty, "legitimate" Restoration drama; however, they drew Londoners in unprecedented numbers and left them dazzled and delighted. Basically home-grown and with roots in the early 17th-century court masque, though never ashamed of borrowing ideas and stage technology from French opera, the spectaculars are sometimes called "English opera". The expense of mounting ever more elaborate scenic productions drove the two competing theatre companies into a dangerous spiral of huge expenditure and correspondingly huge losses or profits.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_spectacular

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1488: Bartolomeu Dias of Portugal sailed around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa and landed in Mossel Bay. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolomeu_Dias)

1787: The Shays Rebellion was crushed, but prompted the drafting of the Constitution of the United States. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays_Rebellion)

1867: Crown Prince Mutsuhito succeeded his father Kōmei as Emperor of Japan, taking the title Meiji. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_period)

1959: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper died in a plane crash on "The Day The Music Died." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_The_Music_Died)

1966: The Soviet spacecraft Luna 9 became the first space probe to land on the Moon and transmit pictures from the lunar surface to Earth. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_9)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

"An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it." -- James A. Michener (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_A._Michener)