Rolla Rossiter
The existence of Rolla Rossiter, Corde Volante and legerdemain performer, would be scarcely worth mentioning, were it not that he left from Australia in 1855 and had a successful year of performing in New Zealand, becoming that country’s first recorded magical performance.
Rossiter arrived in Sydney on December 26, 1854, aboard the clipper Staghound from San Francisco. In the usual lax fashion of newspapers at the time, the Shipping Arrivals list him as “Rossiter”, though later advertising in both Australia and New Zealand spells his name as both Rossiter and Rosseter.
Bernard Reid, in Conjurors, Cardsharps and Conmen, speculates that Rossiter had arrived just too late to capitalise on the gold boom of the early 1850s, and rapidly decided to leave Australia.
This is supported by the almost complete dearth of advertising in Australia; on January 27, 1855, he was announced to give a performance of ‘legerdemain, wire volante, and pipe balancing’ at the Royal Clarence Theatre in Launceston, Tasmania. The Cornwall Chronicle puffed his appearance by stating that “this gentleman has but just arrived from San Francisco and Hobart Town, where he drew crowded houses every night. If his performances in Legerdemain astonished the audience, how shall that feeling be described which pervaded them on beholding him on the Corde Volante? It certainly was of the most wonderful kind ….” However, if Rossiter had performed in Hobart, the newspapers are completely silent on the matter. (1)
1855 Jan 27, 1855
As a side note, Rossiter’s primary talent was as a Corde Volante performer. There is some lack of clarity in his exact skill, since some mentions say that he “danced on a wire rope”. However, the Wire Volante or ‘Cloud Swing’ of today is not simply a slack-wire walking act, but a hanging rope on which various poses and swinging were exhibited. There are mentions of other Volante performers of the time who performed “evolutions” on the cord, and in Rossiter’s New Zealand performances he was billed as a Wire Volante performer directly alongside a Slack Rope vaulter.
So, with a single known performance in this country, Rossiter departed for New Zealand in late March 1855. In that country he had a far more successful run for a full year, with both his magic and acrobatic feats, and occasionally as a circus ringmaster.
Eventually, Rossiter would return briefly to Australia and then depart on tour to Chile.
Assuming it to be the same person, he did perform once more in Australia, this time at the Fitz Roy Hotel in Maitland NSW, on April 19, 1856. The advertisement of April 17 declared that he had just arrived from California and would exhibit Legerdemain, Grecian Exercises, Wire Volant &c.
(1) Rossiter does not rate a mention even in Mark St Leon’s extensively researched “Circus in Australia – Index of Show Movements, 1833-1969”