Lilian Mary Baylis CH (9 May 1874 – 25 November 1937) was an
English theatrical producer and manager. She managed the
Old Vic and
Sadler's Wells theatres in London, and ran an opera company, which became the
English National Opera (ENO), a theatre company, which evolved into the English
National Theatre, and a ballet company, which eventually became the English
Royal Ballet.
Lilian Baylis was born in London, England. Her education was mainly in music, and she began performing and teaching music at an early age. The Baylis family ran a concert party which performed with some success under the name of The Gypsy Revellers and, as a young teenager, Lilian Baylis sometimes played several Gypsy Revellers engagements in one night. The other major influence in Baylis’s life was social housing; Baylis’s aunt, Emma Cons was an associate of Octavia Hill and worked energetically to improve the quality of life for those living in London’s slums.
In 1891, Baylis’s family emigrated to South Africa when The Gypsy Revellers were offered a long term contract there. They toured for some time but eventually settled in Johannesburg where Baylis earned a good living as a music and dance teacher. In 1898, Baylis returned to London from South Africa as she was ill, and her intended return to South Africa was delayed by the outbreak of the Boer War. Whilst living in London Baylis assisted Emma Cons in running The Royal Victoria Hall and Coffee Tavern near Waterloo Station, and Baylis gradually took on more management duties running concerts, film shows, lecture programmes and variety shows. Eventually she decided to stay in England and, following Cons's death in 1912, Baylis had complete managerial control of the theatre, known by then as the "Old Vic", until her death. One of her most significant achievements at the Old Vic was to produce a full cycle of Shakespeare's plays, starting with The Taming of the Shrew in 1914 to Troilus and Cressida in 1923.
In 1925, Baylis began a campaign to re-open the derelict Sadler's Wells Theatre, something she finally achieved with a gala opening, on the 6th of January 1931, of a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night starring John Gielgud as Malvolio and Ralph Richardson as Toby Belch. For the first few years the opera, drama and ballet companies, known as the "Vic-Wells" companies, rotated between the two theatres, but by 1935 the ballet and opera companies were based at Sadler's Wells and the drama company at the Old Vic.
