The music hall originated from many eighteenth-century coffee houses, public saloon bars and taverns that existed around the country. Saloons were rooms where entertainment was performed, either for an admission fee or enhanced bar prices. They were different from theatres; in a music hall seating was at tables where you could drink alcohol and smoke during a show, whereas in a theatre the audience was seated in stalls. However, some theatres established music hall environments. In London particularly, business was conducted whilst performers would entertain at the same time. Some of the coffee houses and taverns dedicated time for entertainment and set aside rooms specifically for performances.
The taverns, saloons and supper rooms were noisy and difficult places in which to perform. The audiences would be talking while the artistes performed and some audience members were rowdy often throwing items at the performers by way of disapproval. In the music venues of industrial towns, it was not unusual to throw metal rivets! Orchestra pits were protected by grilles installed over them.
By the mid-1800s dedicated music hall theatres had become popular entertainment venues offering a varied programme of variety acts with memorable songs and other theatrical displays - specifically to entertain whilst people socialised. This was a new concept for the theatre and entertainment sector because until then theatres had seated audiences and more importantly did not mix entertainment with refreshments. The arrival and popularity of music halls changed the way people viewed the social scene and their leisure time. The music hall provided all social classes with inexpensive entertainment with the public being treated to a wide range of performances from acrobatics to comedy, singing and dancing, so much so that audience members continually vied to get the best view of the performances.
Audiences were predominantly the urban working class who had a desire for more affordable entertainment in a relaxed atmosphere where they could enjoy the varied music and acts that entertained.
In some cases music halls began to gain a reputation for distasteful performances particularly from the middle-class Victorians but this did not affect their popularity because by the mid-1870s, there were hundreds of music halls operating with around 370 in the London area alone.
For some working-class women, performing in music halls provided an independent income for them. Their popularity obviously depended upon their talent but many rose to fame as entertainers. If they were not very good then they were frequently booed off stage and that was the end of their careers.
However, singing, comedy and dancing often in the pantomime style remained the typical entertainment found in most music halls. Many other new types of performances and genres also gained popularity within the music halls including mime artists, magicians and circus-style trapeze artists, female impersonators, lions comiques, impressionists and comic pianists.
As music halls evolved and became more popular, the audience paid more attention to the entertainers as opposed to the food and drink. It was normal for the popular big stars to earn big money by performing at multiple venues in one evening, sometimes having a frantic journey between them. The stress of such a lifestyle often took a toll on the stars causing them to retire early or by even killing them at a fairly young age. By the end of the nineteenth century some popular music halls were featuring up to twenty acts a night in shows often lasting nearly four hours. In the early twentieth century, things changed for the better with halls presenting shorter dual evening shows with their artists no longer contracted by performance.
