Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T05:28:36.872Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - The lure of aria, procession and spectacle: opera in eighteenth-century London

from PART II - MUSIC FOR THE THEATRE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2011

Simon P. Keefe
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
Get access

Summary

In 1789, Charles Burney described the operas of Henry Purcell – Dioclesian, King Arthur and The Fairy-Queen – as ‘differing from real operas, where there is no speaking’. Burney’s remark reflected his expressed preference for Italian music and (sub-consciously) his own failure as a composer to do anything other than produce a few insignificant ditties while apprenticed to the theatre composer Thomas Arne. But it is also a remark that has contributed to a skewed historical picture of late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century opera in England that persists to this day – skewed, because for the majority of English theatre-goers, ‘real opera’ had spoken dialogue, and was a genre they preferred to the ‘foreign’ all-sung version. Yet despite this self-evident fact, it is Burney’s view that has come to dominate both English and non-English writings about opera in England. This situation has been compounded by the country’s inability to nurture to an internationally recognized level the musical talent that it clearly possessed, making it easy for those viewing England both from without and within the Austro-German tradition to dismiss the country as ‘the land without music’, and English opera as ‘a mass of insincerity’ lacking ‘the pure ideal which had been the guiding spirit of Peri and Monteverdi’, or (at best) as ‘light opera’ relying on ‘dramatic principles’.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aspden, Suzanne. ‘“An Infinity of Factions”: Opera in Eighteenth-Century Britain and the Undoing of Society’. Cambridge Opera Journal, 9/1 (1997) –19CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnett, Dene. The Art of Gesture: The Practices and Principles of 18th-Century Acting. Heidelberg, 1987Google Scholar
Burden, Michael. ‘Metastasio’s “London Pasties”: Curate’s Egg or Pudding’s Proof?’ In Hilscher, Elisabeth Theresia und Sommer-Mathis, Andrea (eds.), Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782), ‘uomo universal’. Vienna, 2000 –309Google Scholar
Burden, Michael.‘Metastasio on the British Stage to 1840: A Catalogue’. Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 40 (2007)Google Scholar
Burden, Michael.‘Opera and Theatre’. In Moody, Jane and O’Quinn, Daniel (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the British Theatre 1730–1830. Cambridge, 2007 –17Google Scholar
Donald, Burrows and Dunhill, Rosemary. Music and Theatre in Handel’s World: The Family Papers of James Harris 1732–1780. Oxford, 2002Google Scholar
Dean, Winton and Knapp, J. Merrill. Handel’s Operas 1704–1726. Oxford, 1987Google Scholar
Dean, Winton. Handel and the Opera Seria. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969Google Scholar
Dean, Winton. Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741. Woodbridge and Rochester, NY, 2006Google Scholar
Dircks, Phyllis T.The 18th-Century English Burletta. Victoria, BC, 1999Google Scholar
Donohue, J.Burletta and the Early Nineteenth-Century English Theatre’. Nineteenth-Century Theatre Research, 1 (1973) –51Google Scholar
Fenner, Theodor. Opera in London: Views of the Press, 1785–1830. Carbondale, IL, 1995Google Scholar
Fiske, Roger. English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century. 2nd edn. Oxford, 1986Google Scholar
Howard, Patricia, ‘Guadagni in the Dock: A Crisis in the Career of a Castrato’. Early Music, 27 (1999) –95CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hume, Robert D.Theatres and Repertory’ [1660–1776]. In Donohue, Joseph (ed.), The Cambridge History of British Theatre, vol. 2. Cambridge, 2004 –70Google Scholar
Hume, Robert D.Drama and Theatre in the Mid and Later Eighteenth Century’. In Richetti, John (ed.), The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780. Cambridge, 2005 –39Google Scholar
Hume, Robert D.The Economics of Culture in London, 1660–1740’. Huntington Library Quarterly, 69 (2006) –533Google Scholar
Joncus, Berta. ‘Producing Stars in Dramma per musica’. In Bucciarelli, Melania and Joncus, Berta (eds.), Music as Social and Cultural Practice: Essays in Honour of Reinhard Strohm. Woodbridge and Rochester, NY, 2007 –93Google Scholar
Lindgren, Lowell. ‘Camilla and The Beggar’s Opera’. Philological Quarterly, 59 (1980) –61Google Scholar
Lindgren, Lowell.‘Venice, Vivaldi, Vico and Opera in London, 1705–17: Venetian Ingredients in English Pasticci’. In Fanna, A. and Morelli, G. (eds.), Nuovi studi vivaldiani. Florence, 1988 –66Google Scholar
Milhous, Judith, Gabriella Dideriksen, and Hume, Robert D.. Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London. Vol. 2. The Pantheon Opera and its Aftermath 1789–1795. Oxford, 2001Google Scholar
Milhous, Judith, and Hume, Robert D.. ‘Opera Salaries in Eighteenth-Century London’. Journal of the American Musicological Society, 46 (1993) –83CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milhous, Judith, and Hume, Robert D..‘Construing and Misconstruing Farinelli in London’. British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 28 (2005) –85Google Scholar
Milhous, Judith.The Economics of Theatrical Dance in Eighteenth-Century London’. Theatre Journal, 5 (2003) –508Google Scholar
Petty, Frederick C.Italian Opera in London, 1760–1800. Ann Arbor, MI, 1980Google Scholar
Price, Curtis A.Opera and Arson in 18th-Century London’. Journal of the American Musicological Society, 42 (1989) –107CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Curtis A.Unity, Originality and the London Pasticcio’. Harvard Library Bulletin, 2/4 (1991), pp. 17–30Google Scholar
Price, Curtis A., Milhous, Judith and Hume, Robert D.. The Impresario’s Ten Commandments. Royal Musical Association Monographs, 6 (London, 1992)Google Scholar
Price, Curtis A., Milhous, Judith and Hume, Robert D.. Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London. Vol. 1. The King’s Theatre, Haymarket 1778–1791. Oxford, 1995Google Scholar
Smith, W. C.The Italian Opera and Contemporary Ballet in London, 1789–1820. London, 1955Google Scholar
Strohm, Reinhard. Essays on Handel and Italian Opera. Cambridge, 1985Google Scholar
Toft, Robert. Heart to Heart: Expressive Singing in England 1780–1830. Oxford, 2000 –81Google Scholar
Weber, William. ‘Musical Culture and the Capital City: The Epoch of the Beau Monde in London 1700–1870’. In Wollenberg, Susan and McVeigh, Simon (eds.), Concert Life in 18th-Century Britain. Aldershot, 2004 –89Google Scholar
White, Eric Walter. A History of English Opera. 2nd edn., London, 1983Google Scholar
Willaert, Saskia. ‘Italian Comic Opera at the King’s Theatre in the 1760s: The Role of the Buffi’. In Wyn-Jones, David (ed.), Music in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Aldershot, 2000 –71Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×