Anna Pavlova, the Russian ballerina who was the greatest superstar of her day, danced at the New Hippodrome and Palace Theatre of Varieties – now the Civic Theatre. Her booking was a coup for the Italian impresario Signor Rino Pepi, who founded the theatre, and died on the same day.
Pepi was born in Florence in 1872 and became the finest quick-change artiste in all Europe. In 1898, he topped the bill in London’s West End and then, encouraged by his wife Mary, Countess de Rossetti, he went into theatre management. He operated a string of music halls from Blackpool to Middlesbrough, although those in Barrow and Darlington, which he opened on 2 September 1907, were the most enduring.
All Darlington turned out to watch Pavlova process from the station to the theatre, but only the wealthiest could see her perform (dress circle tickets were 10s 6d). Tragically, Pepi wasn’t among them. Several hours after she closed with her pièce de theatre – the dying swan from Saint Saen’s Carnival of the Animals – Pepi died of cancer of the left lung at his home in Tower Road. He was 55.
He was buried alongside his countess in Barrow, although his ghost still haunts dressing room No. 5 – once his one-bedroom apartment – and it appears in the royal box stage right a second before curtain up.
(‘Memories’, The Northern Echo, 2006)