Preface

Summary

As the most spectacular, prestigious, and yet controversial theatrical entertainment in London, opera must have had some relation to politics. This volume, Opera and Politics in Queen Anne’s Britain, 1705–1714, explores the relations of Italian-style opera and politics against the background of domestic Tory-Whig party strife and the continental War of the Spanish Succession during the reign of Queen Anne.

Even before Italian-style opera was introduced to London in 1705, Italian and English singing were politicised around the singers Margarita de l’Epine and Catherine Tofts. The features of Italian and English singing were used by Whigs to deride Tory statesman and define British national identity.

The best-known English responses to opera are the criticisms and satire by Whigs John Dennis, Richard Steele, and Joseph Addison. Contrary to this impression of opposition, opera’s introduction had its origin in 1703 with the Whig John Vanbrugh’s plans for a theatre in the Haymarket, a project largely supported by Whigs and the Kit-Cat Club. Some prologues, epilogues, and librettos of operas from 1706 to 1708 express ideas sympathetic to or that endorse Whig politics.

The writings by Dennis, Steele, and Addison are often presented as if sharing a common viewpoint; but their ideas can be distinguished, and Addison proposed correcting opera in line with the ideal of politeness.

By 1710 opera in London was an Italian institution, dominated by Italians singing librettos in Italian composed by Italians. Nonetheless, several Whig promoters of opera produced works that embody an English aesthetic for dramatic music.

After arriving in England in 1710, George Frideric Handel was enlisted as composer by both sides of the War of the Spanish Succession. An early serenata celebrated an Allied victory in Spain. But his later setting of the Te Deum and Jubilate for the Thanksgiving Day celebration of the Peace of Utrecht led to his dismissal by the future King of Britain.

There is no single or simple relationship between opera and politics that can be explored, such as how political party affiliation affected opera patronage and attendance or how operas themselves carried topical political ideas. Rather, the question explored in this and two companion books is not the relationship between opera and politics, but what were the relations between opera and politics at the time of its production and reception.