Brighton Dome
Encyclopedia
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
that contains the Concert Hall, Corn Exchange and the Pavilion Theatre
Pavilion Theatre (Brighton)
The Pavilion Theatre is a theatre in Brighton, England. It is part of the wider Brighton Dome complex of buildings. It was built in 1935, originally as a supper room, but later converted into a theatre. Its audience capacity is 232 seated or 350 standing....
. All three venues are linked to the rest of the Royal Pavilion Estate by an underground tunnel to the Royal Pavilion in Pavilion Gardens and through shared corridors to Brighton Museum, as the entire complex was built for the [Prince Regent] and completed in 1805. Originally the Concert Hall was the Prince Regent's stables with the Corn Exchange being a riding school.
William Porden designed the new stables and riding school for the Prince. Inspired by water colour pictures of India he created an incredible building in the Indo-Saracenic style with a vast glass dome (24 metres in diameter and 19 metres high) covering the main hall. Many pessimists predicted that this daring construction would collapse once the scaffolding was removed. The stables were converted to a Concert Hall around 1860. Since this time the Corn Exchange and Concert Hall have gone through many different guises with the latest renovation of the Concert Hall taking place in 2001/2 and costing £22m. This rebirth was ushered in with the help of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Courtney Pine, Nigel Kennedy and Fatboy Slim
Fatboy Slim
Norman Quentin Cook better known by his former stage name Fatboy Slim, is a British DJ, electronic dance music musician, and record producer. He is a pioneer of the big beat genre that achieved mainstream popularity in the 1990s...
(amongst others).
It is one of the only buildings to have both internal and external listings both for the Indian style exterior and the 1930s art deco interior.
It also used to contain a large glass gas powered chandelier which was broken down in the 1930s. It is rumoured that each builder took a part of the chandelier home as a souvenir but nobody has ever owned up to owning a piece.
In the first world war the Dome as well as the Pavilion was used to house injured Indian soldiers. It was thought that they would feel more at home in the Indian surroundings.
It famously staged the Eurovision Song Contest
Eurovision Song Contest 1974
The Eurovision Song Contest 1974 was the 19th Eurovision Song Contest. It was held in the seaside resort of Brighton on the south coast of the United Kingdom...
on 6 April 1974 where ABBA
ABBA
ABBA was a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1970 which consisted of Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Fältskog...
won for Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
with Waterloo.
The venue now plays host to a varied programme of events; with concerts from every musical style, serious plays and family theatre, ballet and contemporary dance, comedy and it is also available for private conferences.
The Dome Organ
One of the Dome's most famous features is its pipe organ.The first pipe organ
Pipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...
in the Dome's Concert Hall was built in 1870 by the famous London firm of Henry Willis & Sons
Henry Willis & Sons
thumb|250px|St Bees Priory organ, the last major instrument to be personally supervised by "Father" Henry Willis, 1899Henry Willis & Sons is a British firm of pipe organ builders founded in 1845 in Liverpool. Although most of their installations have been in the UK, examples can be found in other...
to a specification of forty-four stops spread over four manuals and pedals. This instrument was removed in 1935 for the great rebuilding of the theatre and was never returned, but broken up for parts. The present instrument which replaced it in 1935 was built by the firm of Hill, Norman and Beard. This organ has four manuals and one hundred and seventy-eight stops obtained by extension and borrowing of numerous ranks, plus numerous percussion effects. It has recently been restored by David Wells of Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
and a "floating" String Organ added from the organ at Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne is a country house, thought to be about six hundred years old, located near Lewes in East Sussex, England. It is also the site of an opera house which, with the exception of its closing during the Second World War, for a few immediate post-war years, and in 1993 during the...
, which had been broken up.