IN 1907, when a reporter from The Northern Echo walked into Signor Rino Pepi’s New Hippodrome in Darlington for the first time, he was wowed by what he saw.

He said the Italian impresario had created a spacious but cosy interior, and he admired the crimson silk plush married with old gold trimmings, the artistic decorations around the balconies, the “outstanding ornamental work” on the royal boxes, and the auditorium ceiling which, he concluded, was “a beautiful picture”.

If he returned in 2017, his wow would be magnified 110 times, one for each passing year.

All that he so admired is still there: the rich red seating and carpets set off by opulent gold touches, the artistically restored plasterwork of entwining leaves and globes, the outstanding royal boxes which now hover majestically as the cladding beneath them has been removed, and the auditorium ceiling, stippled in gold leaf, which is still a beautiful picture set off by a sunburner where the little lights dance in the darkness like a floodlit ballerina on a stage.

The cream-themed auditorium is still cosy. In fact, it envelopes you in its warm welcome.

It may be even more spacious than it was in 1907, when 2,000 sweaty bodies were somehow crammed in. Today, there are just over 1,000.

In the stalls, the central aisles are gone, and the seats are arranged in a continental style so you are looking over the person in front’s shoulder rather than at the back of his big bald head. Upstairs, there is definitely more legroom and from the vertiginous gods, there are much better sightlines, while running around the back of each balcony is a row of stool-height chairs.

But alongside this Edwardian elegance, there is now a startlingly 21st Century extension of angular shapes, dramatic glazing, brushed steel piping, and shadowless modern lighting.

The new build has swept away the ramshackle huddle of dressing rooms and offices that had been clagged on to the original building over the decades, and it has extended into the two neighbouring restaurants.

So the new space is contemporary, light and airy, with galleries and gathering spaces, plus cafes and function rooms.

It does not compete with the old theatre and it does not overwhelm it. It surrounds it protectively, venerating the character of the old original, but adding modern money-making ventures and addressing modern access concerns.

The Hippodrome was formally opened yesterday with Sir Peter Luff, chair of the Heritage Lottery Fund which has provided £5m of the £13.7m cost, cutting the ribbon, and it is ready in time for panto. “Like Snow White fell asleep, so after a dark period life returns to the theatre,” he said. “An early 20th Century theatre has become fit for the mid 21st Century.”

The theatre’s past is celebrated at every turn, especially the contribution of its flamboyant founder, Pepi. Yesterday’s reopening was exactly the 90th anniversary of his death which itself was the day of his greatest theatrical moment: he died in Tower Road just hours after the world’s greatest ballerina, Anna Pavlova, had danced on his stage in Parkgate.

Pepi’s ghost is said to haunt the site of his one-room apartment in the theatre, and to take its place in the royal box stage right just a few seconds before curtain up.

Yet yesterday it didn’t show. There was not a flicker in the box throughout the proceedings, and there was not even the slightest hint of a shadowy outline of an impresario’s top hat in the new-look gallery where his apartment used to be.

Perhaps, after all these decades of worry about the perilous state of the beloved theatre that he left behind, he has finally been laid to rest, peaceful in the knowledge that despite the age of council cuts, its future has been magnificently secured.