scene-painter and theatre mechanist, came to Sydney from London in 1852 and worked in Sydney and Melbourne as a theatre mechanist. During the 1860s he was with the Royal Victoria and the Prince of Wales Opera House at Sydney. In January 1865 the Sydney Morning Herald announced that the last scene (the harlequinade) in the pantomime at the Royal Victoria had been painted and arranged by Renno, not W.J. Wilson as previously reported. This appears to be his sole documented scene-painting although he may have continued to be responsible for the scenic, as well as the mechanical, effects of the annual harlequinades in which his son ('Young Renno’) or other members of his family generally took part. He may also have cut the zinc transparency hung from his inn in Castlereagh Street, Sydney, to celebrate the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to Sydney in 1868. This was a 'pierced transparency with a ship, the Duke’s arms, initials, chromatropic wheel and other devices’.
Renno’s career as a publican appears to have been brief and was probably combined with continuing work as a mechanist. When he and Alfred Clint presented a two-part panorama of the Franco-Prussian War and views in New South Wales and Victoria at the Sydney School of Arts in March 1871, Renno was acknowledged as being responsible for 'the mechanical effects’—such as ships moving about the harbour in front of a backdrop showing Government House and Farm Cove and vehicles and mechanical figures (including firemen) in a scene of George Street by night—while Clint painted the scenery. The Sydney Mail critic clearly enjoyed the effects more than the settings and they do appear to have been ingenious, with many local references.
In 1882 Renno testified to the first royal commission into New South Wales theatres that he had been a theatre mechanist 'for fifty-five years; man and boy, all my life; twenty-five years in the principal theatres of London; thirty years in the Colonies. I was at Drury Lane, Covent Garden, the Princess’s, and the Surrey Theatre. I left the Princess’s to come out here in 1852’. His career as a mechanist continued into the 1890s. In 1891 his contribution to the production of This Great City (in conjunction with the scene-painter Alta) at the Alexandra Theatre, Melbourne, was described by the Lorgnette as another of 'those masterpieces of mechanical effect with which the name of Renno is so notably connected’.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
