page_title: Violet Melnotte
section_title: Later years
hierarchical_section_title: Violet Melnotte / Later years
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Violet Melnotte (1855-1935) in 1918
context_page_description: Violet Melnotte, was a stage performer and actress-manager and theatre owner of the late 19th century and early 20th century. She was the wife of Gilbert and Sullivan performer Frank Wyatt, whom she met when they both appeared in the hit operetta Erminie.
  Melnotte performed in comic opera and pantomime in London and the British provinces for eight years before venturing into theatre management in 1885. After this, she continued to perform while managing several West End theatres. She and her husband built the Duke of York's Theatre in 1892, and she owned the theatre for four decades. In 1910 she built the Duke of York's Picture House in Brighton, a state-of-the-art facility.
context_section_description: Melnotte managed Toole's Theatre and produced plays at the Royalty Theatre, while at the same time she and Wyatt were building the Duke of York's Theatre in London. It opened on 10 September 1892 as the Trafalgar Square Theatre, with Wedding Eve, and Melnotte retained ownership of this theatre until her death in 1935, with the exception of a five-year gap from 1928 to 1933. The theatre became known as the Trafalgar Theatre in 1894 and the following year became the Duke of York's to honour the future King George V.
  In 1910 she built the Duke of York's Picture House in Brighton, at a cost of £3000; it boasted all the latest amenities and comforts. In April 1918 she sold the cinema to Jack Channon, the director of Sussex Picturedromes Ltd. With Wyatt she had a son, Nevill Francis Gunning Wyatt (1890–1933),  and a daughter, Rita Dagmar Wyatt (born 1891).
  In 1934, aged 79, she was briefly engaged to the 31-year-old Archibald Patrick Moore, the general manager at the Duke of York's Theatre. There was such a public outcry over the difference in their ages she considered adopting him instead so that he could inherit the theatre on her death, all her children having predeceased her. Eventually neither marriage nor adoption went ahead.
  In her final years Melnotte lived at the Piccadilly Hotel in London and the Hotel Metropole in Brighton. She died in London in 1935 aged 80.
caption: Violet Melnotte in 1918
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