Frederick Gye

Frederick Gye (the younger) (1810–1878) was an English businessman and opera manager who for many years ran what is now the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Gye, son of Frederick Gye (the elder), was born at Finchley, Middlesex, in 1810, and educated at Frankfurt-am-Main. He assisted his father in the management of Vauxhall Gardens from about 1830, and at the same period had a contract for lighting some of the government buildings. He was afterwards associated with Monsieur Louis Antoine Jullien in the Covent Garden promenade concerts in 1846, and was his acting-manager when Jullien opened Drury Lane Theatre as an English opera house in 1847.

When Edward Delafield became lessee of the Italian Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1848, Gye was appointed business manager. On 14 July 1849 Delafield was declared bankrupt; Gye, in conjunction with the artists, carried on the house for the remainder of the season as a undertaking. In September 1849 he was the acknowledged lessee, having obtained a lease for seven years, and receiving a salary of £1,500 per annum as manager. On 24 July in that year he produced Meyerbeer's Le prophète, but it never became a favourite piece in England.

In 1851 the repertory of Covent Garden opera house included thirty-three operas, three of which were by Meyerbeer. On 9 August Gounod's Sappho was played, the first opera by that composer that was heard in England, but it was a failure. Johanna Wagner, a German prima donna, breaking her contract with Benjamin Lumley in 1852, engaged to sing for Gye. Legal proceedings ensued, and in the Court of the Queen's Bench on 20 February 1853 judgment was given in favour of Lumley, but without damages.

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