You just can't make this stuff up...
Came across this wonderful tidbit yesterday while researching the Royal Opera:
By the 1830s, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert would frequent the Royal Box up to four times a week in high season. However, in 1856, disaster struck once again. The theatre, hired for a masked ball by a man known as the ‘Wizard of the North’, burned to the ground following a night of drunken revelry and had to be completely rebuilt.
The story gets even better if you check out John Henry Anderson’s Wiki entry-the aforementioned Wizard of the North.
I don’t know which part is better: that his party led to the destruction of a major artistic institution, or that he kept having affairs with people in his act and producing children who were also magicians. It’s like The Wizard of Oz-meets-The Prestige-meets-Harry Potter-meets a circus sideshow.