This Month in Theatre History

AMERICAN THEATRE: Excelsior, the first stage production to use electric lighting, opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Dec. 31 after a successful run at Niblo’s Garden in New York City earlier in the year. Producers Imre and Bolossy Kiralfy consulted with Thomas Edison on the best methods for the use of his incandescent light bulb, invented a few years earlier, onstage.