7 - Whigs Confront Opera: Britain at a Machiavellian Moment

Summary

Whigs played a prominent role in building the Haymarket theatre and promoting all-sung Italian-style opera. This advocacy might seem at odds with the well-known criticism of, if not opposition to, Italian opera by the Whigs Richard Steele, John Dennis, and Joseph Addison, whose views have often been taken to characterise the English response to opera at large, as if they presented a univocal view about opera. This impression can be corrected by bringing up several points. The many Whigs who promoted and patronised opera left little or no testimony in favour of opera to set against the written criticisms of Steele, Dennis, and Addison. These critics in fact held divergent views about opera, and little effort has been made to distinguish them (especially between Steele and Addison).

Importantly there was no unitary ‘Italian opera’ the critics were responding to; they were not reacting to the same stage experience. In the years 1705 to 1710, what were called ‘operas’ encompassed the English dramatic opera, masques, and works sung in English, in English and Italian, or all in Italian. Placing each of these critics in the context of what operas they were responding to and considering their own personal aptitudes and experience with opera clarifies the significance of each writer’s critique. Rather than the intemperate responses some writings have been characterised as, a careful consideration shows there were serious moral, aesthetic, or political bases behind their views.

This chapter examines the responses of three Whig writers: Richard Steele, John Dennis, and Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury. All engage Italian-style opera at the level of cultural politics: what sort of opera should appear on the English stage? What effect does opera have on British Publick Spirit? The critiques by Steele and Dennis, rather than mere irrational, xenophobic attacks, have a foundation in a venerable classical tradition, which Hans Baron called ‘civic humanism’, but for this period might better be called, following Blair Worden, ‘classical republicanism’. The more thoughtful consideration of opera by the Earl of Shaftesbury also lies in this classical republican tradition. Addison’s comments on Italian opera, taken up in the following chapter, both gently satirizing some risible features and seriously considering aesthetic issues of opera, can be seen as an attempt to correct opera as part of the Whig cultural programme of ‘politeness’.