Epilogue

Summary

After the theatrical failure of Albion and Albanius and then lack of support from the court of William and Mary, the willingness of theatre managers to risk producing all-sung operatic works waned. Audience interest in drama combined with music was mostly satisfied by the English dramatic opera, independent theatre masques, musical entertainments, or afterpieces.

Nearly one hundred years after the birth of opera in the courts of northern Italy and its spread to courts and cities across Europe, it fell to a group of Whig aristocrats in 1703 to take up the task of building a new theatre for the production of plays and operas. At the time, there was no consensus on what form opera would take (see appendix 4), but it was taken for granted it would be sung in English. The initial impetus to mount operas was, in the broadest sense, an aspect of the cultural programme of the ascendant Whig oligarchy. In such a context, the Haymarket theatre itself was politicised.

Several early operas had librettos by local poets with Whig affiliations; and in epilogues, prologues, and passing allusions in the operas themselves are sentiments sympathetic with Whig political ideals. Most obvious is the direct allusion to the Whig hero the Duke of Marlborough in Joseph Addison’s Rosamond.

In 1707 Christopher Rich hired as an exotic attraction an Italian castrato to sing at Drury Lane, an action with unforeseen consequences. The imported singers sang in their native language alongside local ones singing in English. Opera then passed from being bi-lingual productions to being sung all in Italian. Thereafter, by 1710 (and well into the following century) opera in London was an Italian institution: with rare exceptions, serious opera was sung all in Italian by casts dominated by Italian singers, with librettos by Italian poets and music composed by Italians. A landmark of 1710 was Handel’s first trip to London, resulting in his first Italian opera composed for England.

With the Hanoverian Succession, opera might have flourished. Now with financial resources far exceeding those of his electorate and war with France at an end, George I could have followed the model of his father and other European courts to turn the Haymarket theatre into a court opera, but the new King’s support for opera early in his reign extended only to giving bounties for operas he attended and occasional gifts to singers.