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Ivanhoe

English Opera before the Nineteenth Century

England's literary tradition has always been a very important influence on the development of its musical tradition. In the seventeenth century it proved so strong that English opera did not become established for a long period of time.

In England, opera's antecedent was the seventeenth century jig. This was an afterpiece which came at the end of a play. It was frequently libellous and scandalous and consisted in the main of a dialogue set to music. The music was usually arranged from popular tunes of the time, so in this respect the jigs anticipate the ballad operas of the eighteenth century.

At the same time as jigs were being performed in the theatres, the masque was gaining a firm hold at Court. Masques had originated at the French Court but were transferred to the English Court which developed a taste for lavish spectacle. By the time of James I and Charles I, masques reached a degree of splendour never seen before. Inigo Jones became the supreme designer for these productions and was responsible for the costumes, scene-painting, stage-carpentry, and stage machinery. This love of, splendour, lavish costumes, and, in particular, highly realistic scenery was to dominate the English stage for the next 300 years.

As well as speech and spectacle these masques contained a good deal of music, such as songs and dances. In Ben Jonson's Lovers made men (1617), "the whole masques was sung after the Italian manner, stilo recitativo".

With the coming of the Commonwealth, public theatres closed and the Court vanished. This put a stop to any developments there may have been in the establishment of opera. However, in 1656 Sir William Davenant produced what is usually called the first English opera. Davenant was primarily a dramatist and wished to perform his new play The Siege of Rhodes in his private theatre. Permission to do this was refused so Davenant revised the text and asked several of the leading composer (Lawes, Cooke, Locke, Coleman and Hudson) to set sections of it. This production was very successful and was followed by The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) and The History of Sir Francis Drake (1659). These pieces were actually encouraged by Cromwell because they were excellent propaganda against Spaina country not in favour at that time.

With the Restoration of Charles II came an influx of foreign musicians and it was widely known that the king preferred the French style in music. In 1671 the Dorset Gardens Theatre opened its doors. It was built in the modern style with a proscenium arch, was well-equipped backstage and for the next twenty years played a major part in London's theatrical life. One of the works performed there in 1673 was Shadwell's Psyche, patterned on the 'comédie-ballet' of the same name produced by Molière and Lully in 1671.

English composers became assured at handling 'Recitative Musick' as is well demonstrated by Blow's Venus and Adonis (1682) which was written specifically for the Court. Seven years later Purcell's first opera Ivanhoe: A Romantic Opera appeared. This was written for a private performance by a girl's school. [This dating has now been challenged]. Judging from the music he wrote, the standard of musical accomplishment must have been extremely high. Dido and Aeneas is Purcell's only through-composed opera, all his others are semi-operas.

The semi-opera form developed naturally from the play with incidental music and appears to have been very popular and widely used. It gave both the dramatist and the composer opportunities to show their talents to their best advantage and balanced satisfactorily the ancient dramatic tradition and the newer musical one. Shakespeare was drawn on for two of Purcell's semi-operas The Fairy Queen (1692) and The Tempest (1695). [Query the latter - did he write it?]

The concept of arranging a Shakespeare play for musical presentation dates back to Davenant's version of The Tempest (1673) with music by Locke and Johnson. Perhaps this is the first instance of a musical work based on a literary one [Even in England Macbeth and The Tempest had been performed in the 1660s.] Beaumont and Fletcher were the bases of two other Purcell semi-operas The Prophetess (1690) and Bonduca (1696). For all his genius, because of the current taste Purcell was unable to write a substantial through-composed opera though it is obvious that his aspirations were in that direction. [No it's not. It is seeing the C17 through C19 eyes.]

Towards the end of the seventeenth century Italian music began to become fashionable and popular in England, paving the way for the invasion of Italian opera in the next century. This invasion was gradual, however. First of all, adaptations of popular Venetian success began to appear, first in translation and later with imported Italians singing in their own language.

In 1707 Adison produced his Rosamund which was a through-composed opera in English but in the Italian style. It was a pronounced failure whereas Handel's Rinaldo (1711) with an Italian text, was a success. Italian opera did not always meet with success. Handel was careful and composed what the public demanded. Between 1711 and 1728 it demanded for the most part Italian opera starring Italian singers who charged incredible fees. After seventeen years the audiences began to tire of it and when John Gay's The Beggar's Opera appeared in 1728 they began to develop a taste for opera in their native tongue. It was by no means an immediate changeover. Handel composed more successful operas until 1741 when he devoted his last years to oratorio, showing that (in his own words)

"the English Language which is so expressive of the sublimest Sentiments, is the best adapted of any to the full and solemn Kind of Musick".

There were a few tentative effort to write English operas in an Italian style during Handel's reign in London. In 1732 Lampe produced his Amelia which was a type of Beaumont and Fletcher romantic tragi-comedy. He followed this by a patriotic work Brit.annia. Arne made his first appearance as an opera composer in 1733 with a new setting of Addison's Rosamund. In 1762 he translated Metastasio's Artaxerxes into English and set it in a somewhat extravagant style. It was successful and was revived several times. Joseph Haydn heard it during one of his visits and praised it.

When The Beggar's Opera appeared in 1728 it heralded the arrival of over 100 more ballad operas. These were extremely popular and several of them satirised the idiosyncrasies of Italian opera. The music was always based on popular songs of the day which was fitted to new rods suited to the plot of the opera.

Although the vogue for this type of opera began to decline around 1738, it certainly gave great impetus to the native taste for comedy, burlesque and the sort of entertainment which ranges from opera pastiche to pantomime.

Several composers succeeded in producing pieces which are still sometimes performed. Lampe's The Dragon of Wantley (1737), which was a satire on Handel's Giustino; Arne's Thomas and Sally (1760), a light-hearted entertainment in two acts with only four characters and recitative instead of dialogue; Arnold's The Maid of the Mill (1765), which is based on music borrowed from J.C. Bach, Galuppi, Jomelli and also Arnold himself.

Dibdin was a young composer whose most successful opera was Lionel and Clarissa (1768). In Bath, the Linleys (father and son) held sway and composed the music for Sheridan's play The Duenna as well as several operas.

Towards the end of the century, William Shield emerged as a important opera composer in the 'galant' style and wrote Rosina (1782) which was his most popular work. Stephen Storace (who met Mozart in Vienna) also began to produce operas at this time, among which are No song, no supper (1790), The Pirates (1792) and The Siege of Belgrade (in which he used several pieces by Mozart).

By the end of the century serious English opera was practically non-existent and the popularity of the light operas was beginning to decline. A good deal of foreign opera was performed, however, so England never lost touch with the latest continental developments.

This was written in 1977 as part of my Bachelor of Music degree at Royal Holloway College, University of London.