San Francisco Minstrels
Event Information
Venue(s):
San Francisco Opera House
Event Type:
Minstrel
Record Information
Status:
Published
Last Updated:
18 June 2025
Performance Date(s) and Time(s)
18 Jan 1875, Evening19 Jan 1875, Evening
20 Jan 1875, Evening
21 Jan 1875, Evening
22 Jan 1875, Evening
23 Jan 1875, Evening
23 Jan 1875, 2:00 PM
Performers and/or Works Performed
Citations
“The San Francisco Minstrels have bowed to the popular taste and produced a ‘society drama.’ It is called ‘Clotilde; or, the Bruised Heart,’ and Mr. Charles Backus plays the heroine with considerable skill and intense power. Everybody dies before the curtain falls, and the audience leave the building with feelings of great satisfaction. A programme of ballads and farces of the usual excellence precedes ‘Clotilde.”
“This handsome little theatre of the San Francisco Minstrels was well-attended last evening, and those present were well repaid for their venture through the bad weather to the pleasant home of the minstrels. Every act performed was funny; but the last, besides being of a most ludicrous character, cleverly conveyed a reproach to the writers of modern society plays. It is called ‘Clotilde; or, The Bruised Heart.’ Charley Backus played Clotilde with such intense and realistic power as no one ever before believed him to possess. Nobody could help sympathizing with his, or rather her, distresses, persecuted as he, or she, was by the man he, or she, hated, and torn from the fine form of the man (Billy Birch) he, or she, loved. When the play ended with the death of all the characters everybody was satisfied that poetic justice was done, but upon whom, nobody dared say.”
“The bruised heart of ‘Charlie’ Backus is convulsing the audiences of the San Francisco Minstrels. Tears roll down the cheeks of his hearers whenever he opens his mouth.”