During the 18th and 19th centuries, silk and satin programmes were regularly produced to mark special evenings at theatre and given to members of the audience in the most expensive seats in the house. Interestingly, this playbill, printed by a printer in New Bond Street on watered silk, was produced for a concert featuring the contralto Miss Clara Butt (1872-1936) in the ballroom of a private house in London's Belgravia, 45, Pont Street.

45 Pont Street was built by the Charrington brewing family. It was an extremely wide a deep house, built on a double plot, with a grand ballroom on the first floor. Frederick Godman purchased a 99-year lease from the Charringtons some time around the turn of the century, and his wife Mrs. F. Du Cane Goodman hosted soirées there, although it is unclear whether the Goodmans had bought it by July 1898, the date of this concert. Clara Butt, who became Dame Clara Butt in 1920, was a star of the Royal Academy of Music where she trained in the early 1890s and became a favourite of royalty, singing in command performances for the Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria. She regularly supplemented her income in the late 1890s from the lucrative business of singing at private musical soirees like this during the London 'season', often performing at two or three different great houses on the same evening.