Royal Albert Hall events in British culture, each year it hosts more than 390 shows in the main auditorium, including classical, rock and pop concerts, ballet, opera, film screenings with live orchestra, sports, award ceremonies, school and community events, charity performances and banquets. A further 400 events are held each year in the non-auditorium spaces. The Hall was originally supposed to have been called the "Central Hall of Arts and Sciences", but the name was changed to the "Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences" by Queen Victoria upon laying the Hall's foundation stone in 1867, in memory of her husband, Prince Albert,
Royal Albert Hall having given its first performance as the Royal Albert Hall Choral Society on 8 May 1872. From 1876 it established the annual Good Friday performance of Handel's "Messiah". The BBC Sir Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, known as "The Proms", is a popular annual eight-week summer season of daily classical music concerts and other events at the Hall. In 1942, following the destruction of the Queen's Hall in an air raid, the Hall was chosen as the new venue for the proms. In 1944 with increased danger to the Hall, part of the proms were held in the Bedford Corn Exchange.