Great Australian Ghost Stories (2 page)

Theatres the world over claim to have resident ghosts and those in Australia are no exception. Australia's oldest surviving playhouse, the Theatre Royal in Hobart, for example, has ‘Fred', a friendly, smiling phantom who is credited with having saved the little architectural gem he calls home by lowering the safety curtain when fire broke out backstage in 1984.

Even modern Sydney Opera House has its share of theatrical spirits, including ‘Old Harry', who haunts the fly bridges above the stage, and ‘Paddy', the meddlesome ghost of a derelict whose ashes are entombed in the building's foundations. Harry rattles ropes and pulleys and Paddy makes his presence known by taking noisy swipes at the instruments in the percussion section of the orchestra during performances.

Fascinating and frightening though Fred, Harry, Paddy and their counterparts in other theatres might be, the award for Australia's top theatrical ghost must go to Signor Federici — a true ‘phantom of the opera' who manages to achieve maximum effect with minimum fuss and who has been alarming actors, singers, dancers, managers, technicians and patrons at Melbourne's Princess Theatre for more than 100 years.

Federici's story begins on a chilly autumn night in 1888 when the grand old Princess (which was then the grand
new
Princess) was packed to the rafters. Elegant ladies with bustles you could rest your beer on and gentlemen wearing tall silk hats lounged in the dress circle; merchants and their wives decked out in their Sunday best filled the stalls; and the ‘gods' was crammed to overflowing with noisy housemaids in their smartest bonnets and apprentices in their shiniest boots. All had come to see and hear a new production of
Faust
, the most popular opera of the time, and, as the night sped on and the drama built to a climax, none doubted they had got their money's worth.

In the last act of the opera, while the deranged heroine Marguerite expires in a prison cell, the devil (Mephistopheles) claims the guilt-ridden hero (Faust) and drags him down into the fiery depths of hell. Melodramatic stuff indeed; and when elevated by Gounod's stirring music, guaranteed to move an impressionable audience like this one. There were sighs and gasps aplenty when this moment was reached and not a few of ladies in the audience suffered palpitations.

The hapless heroine was sung by Nellie Stewart, darling of the Australian stage for forty years, Faust by an English tenor, Clarence Leumane, and Mephistopheles by the celebrated basso Signor Federici. At the climax of the scene Federici threw his scarlet cloak around Mr Leumane, steam began to rise around their feet, coloured orange and red by flickering limelights, then the trapdoor on which they stood slowly descended, the two singers disappearing as if by magic beneath the stage.

A storm of applause and shouts of ‘bravo' drowned the final chorus. The faces of the conductor and players in the pit glowed with unabashed pride, singers in the wings smiled
with self-satisfaction and the promoters rubbed their hands together; a long and successful season seemed assured — but all was not well.

In the cellar beneath the stage the trapdoor came to a shuddering halt. Leumane stepped off and headed straight for the stairs to take his bows. Signor Federici seemed to hesitate then pitched forward into the arms of the steam machine operator, the victim of a massive heart attack.

The basso was carried upstairs unconscious (the pallor of death already on his face) and laid on a settee in the Green Room. Someone went for a doctor while others fussed over their colleague or stared in disbelief. His distraught wife arrived, closely followed by the doctor, who made a hasty examination then ordered that the patient be laid out, full length, on the carpet.

Two galvanic batteries were fetched and leads attached. The doctor frantically tore open Federici's costume and applied these to his barrel-like chest. Electric shocks sent spasms through the singer's limp body but failed to restart his heart.

It was, as the press reported, a scene both tragic and macabre. The red skullcap and false beard had been removed and the doublet ripped, but the cloak, the red silk tights, the sharp-pointed shoes and the rest of the satanic regalia the singer had worn on stage still clothed his now lifeless body. Stunned silence descended over the watchers, broken only by the sobbing of the widow and the moans of several swooning chorus girls.

‘Federici' was the stage name of Frederick Baker, a thirty-eight-year-old Italian-born Englishman who enjoyed some success in London and New York before being signed up by J. C. Williamson Ltd for Australia. He had made his reputation in the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, creating the role
of the Pirate King in
The Pirates of Penzance
and making a speciality of the title role in
The Mikado
. When he arrived in Melbourne in June 1887 with his wife and two children he was already suffering from chronic heart disease. A certain hauteur in his manner and lack of abandon in his acting, remarked on by the press, may have been due to the precarious state of his health.

On the Monday following his death, Federici was buried in the Church of England section of Melbourne General Cemetery. The minister officiating collapsed at the grave side and had to be cared for by a doctor while the rest of the service was read by one of the mourners. The Princess Theatre remained closed that night as a mark of respect for its late star, but the
Faust
season recommenced the next night, a substitute singer taking the role of Mephistopheles.

When that performance ended and the cast assembled on stage for their curtain calls, some of them swore that Federici's ghost was with them — that two Mephistopheles in identical red costumes stepped forwards to take their bows that night. The substitute, Ernest St Clair, was not among those who claimed to have seen his ghostly counterpart but he did complain that invisible hands kept shoving him back into line every time he stepped up to the footlights. Such fanciful claims might be put down to overwrought emotions (or the desire for publicity) but it was not long before reports of Federici's ghost that could not be so easily dismissed began to emerge.

The impresario George Musgrove, a partner in the firm of J. C. Williamson Ltd and one of the most respected men in his profession, spotted a strange man sitting in the dress circle during a late night rehearsal and took one of his staff to task for allowing a visitor into the theatre. The employee was adamant that he had admitted no one. A search was made but
by then the stranger had vanished. Musgrove never claimed it was Federici's ghost he had seen but others did and after that many claimed to have also seen it. Even more said that they had felt the ghost brush past them in the theatre's narrow corridors and any mishap or equipment failure that occurred was blamed on him. Never slow to capitalise on publicity, the theatre owners put it about that they were willing to pay 100 pounds to any member of the public prepared to spend a night alone in the theatre, but there is no record of anyone taking up their challenge or that they were really prepared to part with such a large sum.

Around 1900 a new fire alarm system was installed in the theatre. The resident fireman was required to punch a time clock every hour, which triggered a light on a switchboard at nearby Eastern Hill fire station. If the fireman failed to clock in the alarm was raised and a brigade despatched to the theatre. One night during a heat wave that happened. No message came through on the hour and within minutes a brigade set off, horses' hooves striking sparks off Nicholson Street and bells clanging frantically.

When they reached the theatre the station firemen could find no sign of a fire but did find their colleague — huddled in a corner, quaking with fear. When he recovered sufficiently the fireman explained that he had decided to open the sliding section of the theatre's roof to let the heat out and some fresh air in. As the panels opened, bright moonlight flooded the auditorium then the proscenium, revealing a figure standing, statue-like, on centre stage. It was, the shocked man said, a tall, well-built man with distinguished features, dressed in evening clothes with a long cloak and a top hat.

‘A real toff 'e was, wiv' 'is hair parted in the middle an' all slicked down. But not a real man … not flesh and blood. I
could see
frough
'im, I could,' the distressed fireman explained. ‘Like looking frough dirty glass it was. An' 'is eyes? I shall never forget 'is
eyes
till the day I die. They glowed in the moonlight … a bit like cat's eyes, but like no cat I ever seen!'

The most widely publicised sighting of Federici's ghost occurred in 1917. Betty Beddoes, the theatre's wardrobe mistress, was working round the clock to finish costumes for a production of Sheridan's
School for Scandal
which was about to open. At 2.30 in the morning another fireman knocked gently on her workroom door and stuck his head inside.

‘Excuse me, Miss Beddoes,' he said, ‘er … would you like to see a ghost?' Curious but sceptical Betty said she would and followed the fireman up the side stairs to a landing beside the dress circle. The fireman pointed. Betty looked and could hardly believe her eyes. Federici was sitting in the middle of the second row of the dress circle, quite motionless and staring down at the empty stage. His face was in profile and although his features were indistinct Betty could see where his carefully groomed hair was greying. His immaculate white shirt front glowed in the half light and the studs that fastened it and the jewelled stick pin in the shape of a horseshoe securing his cravat sparkled like stars.

The wardrobe mistress and the fireman watched the spectre for a long time and it was still there when they returned to work. Fifty years later, Betty Beddoes could remember every detail of that experience and delighted in recounting what she called her ‘only brush with the supernatural in nearly ninety years'.

Two years later another fireman, John Gange, spotted the ghost on two different occasions and Charlie White, chief machinist at the rival Her Majesty's Theatre, claimed that he had ‘laid' the ghost in the 1930s, insisting that it was nothing
more than a shaft of moonlight shining in through a small window above the dress circle, but earlier witnesses were not convinced and the sightings continued.

Irene Mitchell, proprietor of the St Martin's Theatre in South Yarra, reported seeing it while visiting the Princess one night and Kitty Carroll, wife of the impresario who took over the theatre after World War Two, claimed that she had come upon it suddenly in a side aisle during a rehearsal of the Ballet Rambert in 1947.

In 1966 June Bronhill, playing in the musical
Robert and Elizabeth
, observed a very peculiar light moving about at the back of the dress circle during a performance and told her colleagues: ‘It was
very
strange, glowing in the centre and dull around the edge, with a sort of pinkish tinge to it. It moved slowly, backwards and forwards behind the last row of seats for three or four minutes then suddenly … it was gone. At first I thought it was an usher with a torch searching for something or helping a member of the audience, but as I looked closer I swear there was
no figure
behind that light!'

Did she think she had seen Federici, the perennial star was asked. ‘I'm not sure.' Bronhill laughed. ‘Someone told me he died in a red costume, so maybe the pink colour is a faded version of that. I
really
don't know
what
I saw and certainly not
who
I saw, but I do know I saw it … and I looked for it every night after that.'

By the early 1980s the Princess Theatre was closed and rapidly becoming derelict. Onto the scene came an enterprising couple, Elaine and David Marriner, who bought the old theatre and restored it to its former glory. The Victorian-berserk-style décor was refurbished inside and out, the wrought-iron-lace-capped cupolas repaired and the magnificent angel that crowns the central pediment given a new gold coating.

Mindful and proud of their theatre's famous phantom, the Marriners named their new foyer café ‘Federici's' and Elaine was rewarded by a personal encounter with the ghost. While walking through the dress circle one day with a friend, the friend felt something brush past her, then Elaine turned to see a hinged seat that had been raised a moment before turned down. ‘And they don't stay down unless someone is sitting on them!' Elaine told
Who
magazine in June 1996.

In the same magazine Rachael Beck, then starring in the musical
Beauty and the Beast
, recalled how a few months earlier she had spotted a stranger in the dress circle during a rehearsal who clapped silently after each number. Later she asked who he was but found no one else had seen him.

In 2004 Rob Guest told an ABC television crew how, during the run of
Les Misérables
, an usher had spotted him at the back of dress circle (in his nineteenth-century costume) and wondered why the show's star was there when he should have been backstage. As Guest explained, it was not him. He
was
backstage, waiting to make his entrance in the barricades scene.

And so the seemingly endless reports keep coming. And are they good for business? Of course they are. In the world of showbiz any publicity is good publicity and if stories of an elegant ghost add an extra ounce of romance and anticipation to a visit to the theatre, who would deny patrons that?

Before we leave Federici there is one interesting sidebar to this story that deserves to be mentioned. In 1972 film producers George Miller and Byron Kennedy (of
Mad Max
fame) shot a short documentary film about Federici. At 7.30 one morning the crew recreated Federici's funeral in Melbourne General Cemetery using nine actors. One of the crew took two still photographs of the scene while the cameras were rolling.
There is nothing out of the ordinary about the first shot but the second, taken just a few seconds later, shows a tenth figure standing among the ‘mourners'.