Thomas German Reed

He was best known for creating the German Reed Entertainments, together with his actress wife, a genre of musical plays that made theatre-going respectable at a time when the stage was considered disreputable.

While acting as organist and chapel-master at chapels in London, and also as musical director and performer at West End theatres in the 1830s and 1840s, Reed tried his hand at producing opera.

[1] In 1832, German Reed became an organist at the Roman Catholic Chapel in Sloane Street and assistant to his father, who moved to be conductor at the Garrick Theatre.

[3] During these years, he met Priscilla Horton, a successful and popular contralto and actress who had been performing on the stage in London since the age of ten.

[3] They eventually became "Mr. and Mrs. German Reed's Entertainments", presented at the Royal Gallery of Illustration in Regent Street, beginning in 1856, and later at St. George's Hall.

[1] At a time when the respectable middle classes regarded the theatre in general as sinful and even dangerous places of naughty humour, alcohol and prostitution, the Reeds called their establishment the "Gallery" of Illustration, rather than a "theatre", and their productions "entertainments" or "illustrative gatherings", rather than plays, extravaganzas, or burlesques.

His composers included Frederic Clay, George Macfarren, Alfred Cellier and Hamilton Clarke as well as Sullivan and Reed himself.

[1] He wrote the scores for more than a dozen of the entertainments, and is described by the museum curator Fredric Woodbridge Wilson as "an imaginative and effective writer of music for the stage".