Found this very interesting newspaper article discussing "Lancaster's Panorama of the Late War" -- being the Crimean War. Anyone read anything else about this and know what sort of show created the "panorama"?

 

(Extract from "Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal" of 13 Feb 1857 - page 4)
LANCASTER'S PANORAMA OF THE LATE WAR.— The above panorama opened in the Athenaeum room on Wednesday evening last. We have not yet been able to pay the exhibition a visit, but we have before us "Opinions of the Press" from many of the leading cities and towns in England, all of which speak of it in the highest terms. The "Manchester Courier" says: — "The Grand Moving Panorama of the Seat of War, now exhibiting at the Exchange Rooms, is attracting very numerous audiences. Some of the scenes are remarkably effective, and their interest is increased by a descriptive lecture given in the progress of the panorama. Several popular songs are sung during intervals of the exhibition, and last evening, when the entertainment was under the patronage of Lieut. Colonel Pringle and the officers of the 6th Royal Lancashire Militia, Mr. Higham's private band attended and performed a selection of appropriate music."

After doing a little more looking into this, here is another interesting tidbit:

 

(Extract from "Leeds Intelligencer" of 16 Oct 1855 - page 1)

REDUCED TO HALF PRICE. --- STOCK EXCHANGE, LEEDS.

Will shortly close, Lancaster's Magnificent Moving Panorama of the Seat of War, now Exhibiting every Afternoon at Half-past Four, and Evening at Eight.

Reserved Seats, 1s.;

Second Seats, 6d.;

Back Seats, 3 d.

After some more research on this, it turns out that one of these Victorian-era panoramas is still in existence and beautifully preserved by Brown University. It's a very large painted canvas that is held on rollers and scrolls in front of the audience as music is played and a narrator tells the story. Each scene is painted in such a way that they fade one into the other as the image scrolls -- it was usually multiple artists (often well known in their day) who painted these scrolls.

The Brown University panorama documents the life of Garibaldi, but they've digitised it in multiple ways to show just how these panoramas worked!

 

You can see it playing as a scrolling narrated sequence here: https://library.brown.edu/cds/garibaldi/panoramaHTML5/panorama_scroll.php

You can see it as the individual panels with accompanying script here: https://library.brown.edu/cds/garibaldi/latest-scene/

 

They've also released a beautiful brochure that explains the whole process, which I'm embedding here as images, or you can see in an online slideshow viewer here:

https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:214146/