Opera in the Quad is the latest event to be scheduled into the diaries at St Paul's College, University of Sydney. This page is previously the official page for Victoriana! - Australia's longest running theatrical production and one of its most endearing. is still the annual production run under the auspices of St Paul's College Union and is a tangible link to the College for Old Paulines. The sea
son dates for 2021 have yet to be announced. Originally brought to Australia from England in 1956 by Pamela Trethowan, Victoriana! found a permanent home at St Paul's College at the instigation of prominent Pauline Lloyd Waddy in 1964, and has played to a succession of packed houses ever since. Based on the English Music Hall tradition, the show draws on music and comedy of the Victorian era. The entire show is performed on a tiny stage in the College Hall, after a usually excellent three course dinner before an audience in formal attire, but always ready to sing boisterously whenever the opportunity arises. Under the masterful baton of the Master of Ceremonies, the audience is invited to join in the choruses of many of the numbers and does so with gusto: "Daddy Wouldn't Buy me a Bow Wow", "I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside", "There Was I Waiting at the Church" and "Nobody Loves a Fairy When She's Forty" (to name but a few). For 36 years the show was hosted by Lloyd Waddy who built up a reputation for himself as a cult figure and for the show as a "must see" across those sections of Sydney society fortunate enough to receive an invitation. From 1999 - 2015 the MC was comedian and radio presenter, Christopher North. Since his departure the MC role has been a floating invitation from the Union from year to year. Over the years the show has featured some wonderfully talented artists including many who have gone on to become house-hold names in the entertainment industry. Traditionally the evening ends at mid-night with the audience standing on their chairs waving sparklers and singing "Land of Hope and Glory", followed by "grand illuminations" (in the modern era called fireworks) in the splendour of Blacket's Quadrangle....after which the choruses can be heard tinkling off into the darkness as the guests make their way home...in the knowledge that a whole year will pass before they can do it all again.
