DOCSLIB.ORG

Chapter 4 : Resumption of Work with Handel

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Chapter 4 : Resumption of Work with Handel 76 CHAPTER 4 : RESUMPTION OF WORK AT THE THEATRE 1. DRURY LANE: SEPTEMBER 1741 – MAY 1743 After his break from the theatre in 1740 Beard was desperate for work. But he didn’t sing in the Oratorio season which ran from January 10th until April 8th 1741 at Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre. It is a mystery why he didn’t go cap in hand to Handel. Perhaps he felt that he had ‘queered his pitch’ with him; or learned that Handel had made definite arrangements to manage without him. Perhaps he approached him too late. Some works (such as Deidamia) no longer required a tenor; and for others (such as L’Allegro and Acis) a certain ‘Mr Corfe’1 had been engaged. This season was a significant one for Handel as it finally marked his move away from opera to oratorio. Imeneo and Deidamia were given their final performances. Handel would perform no more operas after this. He was not even certain of his next career move. London was not a place where his music was appreciated anymore. It was with delight that he took up the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland’s invitation to visit Dublin. For Beard there was nothing for it but to eat humble pie and beg for a job at one of the main theatres. He must have been desperate to regain his position at Drury Lane. In effect he had lost it utterly, since Fleetwood had replaced him with Thomas Lowe. Lowe had inherited all his roles, from ‘Macheath’ in the main-piece Beggar’s Opera down to ‘Sir John Loverule’ in The Devil to Pay, and including the important operatic parts in Arne’s Comus and Rosamond. Charles Jennens, writing to James Harris on December 5th is the best authority for what was happening at this moment in time: “Beard is come home again, and should have gone with Handel into Ireland, but Fleetwood said he should want him to sing in an English opera. Handel took only Miss Edwards and one Mrs Maclean with him…”2 Henrietta would no doubt have preferred to stay in London, and sort out her financial problems. She cannot, at this time, have realised how long and impossible a task it would be. Beard, one suspects, stayed in London and turned down Handel’s offer of joining him in Dublin in order to be at her side and support her. Had he gone with Handel he would have sung in the world-premiere of Messiah, and would have had the title role in Imeneo, besides repeating his roles in Acis, L’Allegro, Esther and Alexander’s Feast. Handel must have sorely missed him. Donald Burrows explains in the Preface to his edition of the opera how the loss of Beard forced Handel to completely rethink the composition of Imeneo: “There is no other opera in which revisions were made on such a comprehensive scale. Handel had to take into account some important differences between the cast of voices that he now had available and the voice-types for which he had prepared the score in 1738 & 1739… In the previous drafts of the score (and possibly at the time of his original plans in 1740) Imeneo had been written for the tenor voice, probably with the expectation that John Beard would take the part…”3 When Beard’s luck turned in September 1741, and he was invited by Fleetwood to come back to Drury Lane for two years, it must have been a very different contract that he signed. Fleetwood had taken him back despite having Thomas Lowe on his roster. Thus he was over- 1 The BDA and Winton Dean give no first name for this singer, but he was probably James, who was born c.1718. From about 1735 he had sung small parts in Handel’s oratorios, (Israelite in Esther and Abner in Saul, both in 1740) but was given bigger roles in 1741 during Beard’s absence. 2 Burrows & Dunhill Music and Theatre in Handel’s World, p. 129 3 ‘Preface’ Imeneo ed. D. Burrows, Hallische Händel-Ausgabe, Bärenreiter 2002 77 provided with tenors. As a result the work-load was divided between them. Beard found himself with less stage performances than normal4, but with more singing to do between the Acts. What the ‘English Opera’ might have been, for which Fleetwood was said to have wanted him, is not at all clear. Beard and Lowe alternated in the role of Macheath, which was played about four times a month. But otherwise there was no remarkable new role for him. It appears that Fleetwood simply took pity on the unfortunate singer (and his sadly disinherited wife) and gave him his old job back, without any real thought for how he could sensibly employ him. With Handel in Dublin there was not even a London oratorio season in which Beard could show off his vocal prowess. He persuaded Fleetwood to let him resume his roles in Comus, The Provok’d Wife and The Lottery; and also returned to the singing witches in Macbeth. When Shakespeare’s As You Like It was revived in May 1742 with music by Arne, he took the role of ‘Amiens’ and sang ‘Under the greenwood tree’, ‘When Daisies pied’ and ‘Blow, blow thou winter wind’ in settings which quickly became firm national favourites. As they were both on Fleetwood’s books for this short period of their careers it is not surprising to learn of Beard and Thomas Lowe teaming up as a double act. The ‘Biographical Dictionary of Actors’ refers to Beard’s “...’speciality acts’, whether solus or with Vernon or Lowe or others in comic or pathetic dialogue” which “were the delight of the audiences” – and describes one of these as a “knock-down duo rendition of “Bumper Squire Jones”.5 As the playbills reveal, Beard and Lowe alternated each night in their favourite songs, but finally came together for their duo rendition of “Bumper Squire Jones”, and a ‘Battle Song’ by Arne which was advertised as: ‘the Representation of a Battle of the two Operatical Generals Per gli Signori Giovanni and Tomasino detti Beard and Lowe’. Towards the end of the season Beard must have been delighted to be given a couple of choice roles. In the farce Miss Lucy in Town he was given the opportunity to make fun of the current stock of Italian singers employed at the King’s Theatre. Kitty Clive acted opposite him as the female lead in this sequel to The Virgin Unmask’d by Henry Fielding. From Horace Walpole we learn that: “…there is a simple farce at Drury Lane, called Miss Lucy in Town in which Mrs Clive mimics the Muscovita [Signora Panichi] admirably, and Beard, Amorevoli6 tolerably. But the run [i.e. ‘vogue’] is now after Garrick, a wine-merchant, who is turned player, at Goodman Fields”.7 The other offering was a role in Buckingham’s The Rehearsal. This was a popular burletta dating from 1671 which still received an average of eight performances a season. Kitty Clive decided to try out some cross-dressing and play the male lead ‘Bayes’. The public was not convinced, and James Winston reported that “she did it most wretchedly”. However, it set her thinking; and in time she came up with a farce of her own, The Rehearsal or Bayes in Petticoats, in which she would appear on stage in a double role, as the Authoress ‘Mrs Hazard’ and as herself. (See Chapter 7 ‘The Garrick Years’.) In this Beard would appear as himself and as ‘Corydon’, the hero of William Boyce’s inserted Masque. 4 At this time – apart from The Beggar’s Opera - he averaged 2 performances a month. All his other performances were of interval songs. In 1742-3 he added The Conscious Lovers to his repertoire. 5 BDA, ‘John Beard’, p. 402-3 6 Angelo Amorevoli (tenor) was in the opera company at the King’s Theatre from the autumn of 1741: see Deutsch Handel a Documentary Biography pp. 520-528 7 Horace Walpole to H. Mann, May 26th 1742, quoted in Deutsch Handel a Documentary Biography p. 549 78 2. HANDEL: 1742-1747 Handel was back in London by September 1742, having left Dublin on August 13th. He kept his cards close to his chest regarding his next plans for an oratorio season, only telling Charles Jennens “...Whether I shall do something in the Oratorio way (as several of my friends desire) I can not determine as yet”.8 But he spent October finishing the oratorio Samson, which he had left incomplete before setting off for his visit to Ireland. The title role was written for a tenor. John Beard’s was the voice that he had in mind for the hero. The twenty-seven-year-old singer was soon going to be back in Handel’s company. His long absence in 1740-2, which had forced Handel to make some unsatisfactory alternative arrangements, was to be forgotten. Beard was about to get some of the best musical roles of his career. His theatrical career had now resumed as though there had been no interruption, and he never missed a further season until his retirement in 1767. He remained as busy as ever. After two years back at Drury Lane, sharing roles with Thomas Lowe, the two singers decided to split up and divide the work between them. When a position for a lead singer became available at Covent Garden it was Beard who opted to move, leaving each one free to have the first choice of identical roles at the rival houses.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Rise of the Tenor Voice in the Late Eighteenth Century: Mozart’S Opera and Concert Arias Joshua M
    University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 10-3-2014 The Rise of the Tenor Voice in the Late Eighteenth Century: Mozart’s Opera and Concert Arias Joshua M. May University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation May, Joshua M., "The Rise of the Tenor Voice in the Late Eighteenth Century: Mozart’s Opera and Concert Arias" (2014). Doctoral Dissertations. 580. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/580 ABSTRACT The Rise of the Tenor Voice in the Late Eighteenth Century: Mozart’s Opera and Concert Arias Joshua Michael May University of Connecticut, 2014 W. A. Mozart’s opera and concert arias for tenor are among the first music written specifically for this voice type as it is understood today, and they form an essential pillar of the pedagogy and repertoire for the modern tenor voice. Yet while the opera arias have received a great deal of attention from scholars of the vocal literature, the concert arias have been comparatively overlooked; they are neglected also in relation to their counterparts for soprano, about which a great deal has been written. There has been some pedagogical discussion of the tenor concert arias in relation to the correction of vocal faults, but otherwise they have received little scrutiny. This is surprising, not least because in most cases Mozart’s concert arias were composed for singers with whom he also worked in the opera house, and Mozart always paid close attention to the particular capabilities of the musicians for whom he wrote: these arias offer us unusually intimate insights into how a first-rank composer explored and shaped the potential of the newly-emerging voice type of the modern tenor voice.
    [Show full text]
  • Shearer West Phd Thesis Vol 1
    THE THEATRICAL PORTRAIT IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY LONDON (VOL. I) Shearer West A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of St. Andrews 1986 Full metadata for this item is available in Research@StAndrews:FullText at: http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/2982 This item is protected by original copyright THE THEATRICAL PORTRAIT IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY LONDON Ph.D. Thesis St. Andrews University Shearer West VOLUME 1 TEXT In submitting this thesis to the University of St. Andrews I understand that I am giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations of the University Library for the time being in force, subject to any copyright vested in the work not being affected thereby. I also understand that the title and abstract will be published, and that a copy of the I work may be made and supplied to any bona fide library or research worker. ABSTRACT A theatrical portrait is an image of an actor or actors in character. This genre was widespread in eighteenth century London and was practised by a large number of painters and engravers of all levels of ability. The sources of the genre lay in a number of diverse styles of art, including the court portraits of Lely and Kneller and the fetes galantes of Watteau and Mercier. Three types of media for theatrical portraits were particularly prevalent in London, between ca745 and 1800 : painting, print and book illustration.
    [Show full text]
  • Romeo Revived .Pdf
    McGirr, E. (2017). "What's in a Name?": Romeo and Juliet and the Cibber Brand. Shakespeare. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450918.2017.1406983 Peer reviewed version Link to published version (if available): 10.1080/17450918.2017.1406983 Link to publication record in Explore Bristol Research PDF-document This is the author accepted manuscript (AAM). The final published version (version of record) is available online via Taylor and Francis at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17450918.2017.1406983. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher. University of Bristol - Explore Bristol Research General rights This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/red/research-policy/pure/user-guides/ebr-terms/ Elaine M. McGirr Reader in Theatre & Performance Histories University of Bristol “What’s in a name?”: Romeo and Juliet and the Cibber brand Abstract: The 1744 and 1748/50 performances of Romeo and Juliet by Theophilus Cibber, Jenny Cibber and Susannah Cibber explain the significance of the play’s return to the repertory, uncover the history of rival interpretations of Juliet’s character, and make sense of the careers and reputations of the theatrical Cibbers. The “Cibberian” airs of all three Cibbers were markedly different, as were their interpretations of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers. Keywords: Shakespearean adaptation, performance history, celebrity, authorial reputation, repertory In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet apostrophizes Romeo to deny thy father and refuse thy name, assuring her (supposedly) absent lover that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
    [Show full text]
  • Handel's Oratorios and the Culture of Sentiment By
    Virtue Rewarded: Handel’s Oratorios and the Culture of Sentiment by Jonathan Rhodes Lee A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Music in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Davitt Moroney, Chair Professor Mary Ann Smart Professor Emeritus John H. Roberts Professor George Haggerty, UC Riverside Professor Kevis Goodman Fall 2013 Virtue Rewarded: Handel’s Oratorios and the Culture of Sentiment Copyright 2013 by Jonathan Rhodes Lee ABSTRACT Virtue Rewarded: Handel’s Oratorios and the Culture of Sentiment by Jonathan Rhodes Lee Doctor of Philosophy in Music University of California, Berkeley Professor Davitt Moroney, Chair Throughout the 1740s and early 1750s, Handel produced a dozen dramatic oratorios. These works and the people involved in their creation were part of a widespread culture of sentiment. This term encompasses the philosophers who praised an innate “moral sense,” the novelists who aimed to train morality by reducing audiences to tears, and the playwrights who sought (as Colley Cibber put it) to promote “the Interest and Honour of Virtue.” The oratorio, with its English libretti, moralizing lessons, and music that exerted profound effects on the sensibility of the British public, was the ideal vehicle for writers of sentimental persuasions. My dissertation explores how the pervasive sentimentalism in England, reaching first maturity right when Handel committed himself to the oratorio, influenced his last masterpieces as much as it did other artistic products of the mid- eighteenth century. When searching for relationships between music and sentimentalism, historians have logically started with literary influences, from direct transferences, such as operatic settings of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, to indirect ones, such as the model that the Pamela character served for the Ninas, Cecchinas, and other garden girls of late eighteenth-century opera.
    [Show full text]
  • The Return of Handel's Giove in Argo
    GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL 1685-1759 Giove in Argo Jupiter in Argos Opera in Three Acts Libretto by Antonio Maria Lucchini First performed at the King’s Theatre, London, 1 May 1739 hwv a14 Reconstructed with additional recitatives by John H. Roberts Arete (Giove) Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani tenor Iside Ann Hallenberg mezzo-soprano Erasto (Osiri) Vito Priante bass Diana Theodora Baka mezzo-soprano Calisto Karina Gauvin soprano Licaone Johannes Weisser baritone IL COMPLESSO BAROCCO Alan Curtis direction 2 Ouverture 1 Largo – Allegro (3:30) 1 2 A tempo di Bourrée (1:29) ATTO PRIMO 3 Coro Care selve, date al cor (2:01) 4 Recitativo: Licaone Imbelli Dei! (0:48) 5 Aria: Licaone Affanno tiranno (3:56) 6 Coro Oh quanto bella gloria (3:20) 7 Recitativo: Diana Della gran caccia, o fide (0:45) 8 Aria: Diana Non ingannarmi, cara speranza (7:18) 9 Coro Oh quanto bella gloria (1:12) 10 Aria: Iside Deh! m’aiutate, o Dei (2:34) 11 Recitativo: Iside Fra il silenzio di queste ombrose selve (1:01) 12 Arioso: Iside Vieni, vieni, o de’ viventi (1:08) 13 Recitativo: Arete Iside qui, fra dolce sonno immersa? (0:23) 14 Aria: Arete Deh! v’aprite, o luci belle (3:38) 15 Recitativo: Iside, Arete Olà? Chi mi soccorre? (1:39) 16 Aria: Iside Taci, e spera (3:39) 17 Arioso: Calisto Tutta raccolta ancor (2:03) 18 Recitativo: Calisto, Erasto Abbi, pietoso Cielo (1:52) 19 Aria: Calisto Lascia la spina (2:43) 20 Recitativo: Erasto, Arete Credo che quella bella (1:23) 21 Aria: Arete Semplicetto! a donna credi? (6:11) 22 Recitativo: Erasto Che intesi mai? (0:23) 23 Aria: Erasto
    [Show full text]
  • The Baritone Voice in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: a Brief Examination of Its Development and Its Use in Handel’S Messiah
    THE BARITONE VOICE IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES: A BRIEF EXAMINATION OF ITS DEVELOPMENT AND ITS USE IN HANDEL’S MESSIAH BY JOSHUA MARKLEY Submitted to the graduate degree program in The School of Music and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts. ________________________________ Chairperson Dr. John Stephens ________________________________ Dr. Michelle Hayes ________________________________ Dr. Paul Laird ________________________________ Dr. Julia Broxholm ________________________________ Mr. Mark Ferrell Date Defended: 06/08/2016 The Dissertation Committee for JOSHUA MARKLEY certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: THE BARITONE VOICE IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES: A BRIEF EXAMINATION OF ITS DEVELOPMENT AND ITS USE IN HANDEL’S MESSIAH ________________________________ Chairperson Dr. John Stephens Date approved: 06/08/2016 ii Abstract Musicians who want to perform Handel’s oratorios in the twenty-first century are faced with several choices. One such choice is whether or not to use the baritone voice, and in what way is best to use him. In order to best answer that question, this study first examines the history of the baritone voice type, the historical context of Handel’s life and compositional style, and performing practices from the baroque era. It then applies that information to a case study of a representative sample of Handel’s solo oratorio literature. Using selections from Messiah this study charts the advantages and disadvantages of having a baritone sing the solo parts of Messiah rather than the voice part listed, i.e. tenor or bass, in both a modern performance and an historically-informed performance in an attempt to determine whether a baritone should sing the tenor roles or bass roles and in what context.
    [Show full text]
  • ~Lagfblll COMPANIES INC
    May 2000 Brooklyn Academy of Music 2000 Spring Season BAMcinematek Brooklyn Philharmonic 651 ARTS Saint Clair Cemin, L'lntuition de L'lnstant, 1995 BAM 2000 Spring Season is sponsored by PHiliP MORR I S ~lAGfBlll COMPANIES INC. Contents • May 2000 Lust in the Woods 10 The Royal Shakespeare Company presents Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream at BAM in a saucy production by Michael Boyd. By Ian Shuttleworth Schiller's Shocker 22 Friedrich Schiller's riveting Don Carlos , to be performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at BAM, still has the power to ruffle feathers. By Steven R. Cerf Program 17 Upcoming Events 43 BAMd i rectory 52 Photo by Jonathan Doc kar-Drysdale I3A 1\/1 CO\/Ar Arti,t Saint Clair Cemin Saint Clair Cemin was born in Cruz Alta , Brazil , in 1951. He studied at the Ecole Nationale L'lntuition de L'lnstant Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, France. He lives in New York City. 1995 Painted wood Cemin's sculpture has been exhibited worldwide, including at the Hirshhorn Museum and 97" x 91 ' x 36' Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Museo de Arte Contemporary, Monterey, Mexico; California Center for the Arts Museum , Escondido, CA; Centro Cultural For BAMart information Light, Rio de Janiero, Brazil; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Stadische Kunsthalle, DUsseldorf, Germany; The Fredrik Roos contact Deborah Bowie at Museum, Malmo, Sweden; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Whitney Museum 718.636.4111 ext. 380 of American Art Biennial, New York, NY; Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas, Grand Canary Island; Documenta IX, Kassel, Germany; 22nd Biennial International, Funda,ao de Sao Paolo; Galleria Communale d'Arte Moderna, Bologna , Italy; Fogg Art Museum , Cambridge, MA; and the Kunsthalle, Basel, Switzerland.
    [Show full text]
  • Catherine Harbor
    The Birth of the Music Business: Public Commercial Concerts In London 1660–1750 Catherine Harbor Volume 2 369 Appendix A. The Register of Music in London Newspapers 1660–1750 Database A.1 Database Design and Construction Initial database design decisions were dictated by the over-riding concern that the Register of Music in London Newspapers 1660–1750 should be a source-oriented rather than a model-oriented database, with the integrity of the source being preserved as far as possible (Denley, 1994: 33-43; Harvey and Press, 1996). The aim of the project was to store a large volume of data that had no obvious structure and to provide a comprehensive index to it that would serve both as a finding aid and as a database in its own right (Hartland and Harvey, 1989: 47-50). The result was what Harvey and Press (1996: 10) term an ‘electronic edition’ of the texts in the newspapers, together with an index or coding scheme that provided an easy way of retrieving the desired information. The stored data was divided into a text base with its physical and locational descriptors, and the index database. The design and specification of the database tables was undertaken by Charles Harvey and Philip Hartland using techniques of entity-relationship modelling and relational data analysis. These techniques are discussed in numerous texts on databases and database design and have been applied to purely historical data (Hartland and Harvey, 1989; Harvey and Press, 1996: 103-130). The Oracle relational database management system was used to create the tables, enter, store and manipulate the data.
    [Show full text]
  • Handel 3 March Program
    operamission from the composer to the audience… HANDEL at the Gershwin a joint presentation with Neke Carson and the Gershwin Hotel Daniel Bubeck, countertenor Alteouise deVaughn, mezzo-soprano David Salsbery Fry, bass Matthew Garrett, tenor Amy van Roekel, soprano Caroline Worra, soprano the operamission HANDEL BAND: Joan Plana and Beth Wenstrom, baroque violin Audrey Selph, baroque viola Ezra Seltzer, baroque cello led from the harpsichord by JENNIFER PETERSON gems and rarities from George Frideric Handel’s London Operas He wrote 39 operas; they’re all good. Please enjoy yourselves this evening, as we have enjoyed bringing these pieces out of the dusty libraries, giving them the breath they deserve. 8:00 PM Wednesday, March 3, 2010 The Gershwin Hotel, New York City program berenice - Sinfonia to open the third Act Please meet the operamission HANDEL BAND through this grand music. The fiery drama set in Alexandria in the year 80 BC in- volves a intense dynastic struggle between Sulla’s Rome and the Queen of Egypt. ariodante - “Vezzi, lusinghe, e brio” - “Orrida a gl’occhi miei” The opera opens with the Princess Ginevra (Caroline Worra) admiring herself in the mirror. All is well. She and Ariodante are in love, her father approves; this is affirmed in a brief conversation with her lady-in-waiting, Dalinda (Alteouise deVaughn), after which who should appear but the Duke of Albany, Polinesso (David Salsbery Fry). His unwelcome advances will continue to be the major source of conflict throughout the drama. Ginevra will have none of it, as she aptly displays in her first da capo aria.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Booklet
    CORO The Sixteen Edition CORO The Sixteen Edition Other Sixteen Edition Blest Cecilia recordings available on Coro Britten Volume 1 COR16006 Iste Confessor "A disc of Samson exceptional quality, The Sacred Music of reinforcing the George Frideric Handel Domenico Scarlatti Sixteen's reputation COR16003 as one of the finest The Sixteen “Outstanding... astonishing choirs of our day." The Symphony of Harmony and Invention stylistic and expressive range” GRAMOPHONE BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE HARRY CHRISTOPHERS The Call of The Beloved The Fairy Queen T HOMAS R ANDLE Victoria Purcell COR16007 2CD set M ARK P ADMORE "If one can ever achieve COR16005 complete emotional "A performance like L YNDA R USSELL expression through the this shows dimensions of power of music, then Purcell's genius that are all L YNNE D AWSON here it is." too rarely heard on disc" HARRY CHRISTOPHERS GRAMOPHONE C ATHERINE W YN -R OGERS Gramophone magazine said of The Sixteen’s recordings “This is what recording should be about...excellent performances and recorded sound...beautiful and moving.” M ICHAEL G EORGE Made in Great Britain J ONATHAN B EST For details of discs contact The Sixteen Productions Ltd. 00 44 1869 331544 or see www.thesixteen.com; e-mail [email protected] N The Sixteen For many years Handel’s G.F. HANDEL (1685-1759) Samson was every British SAMSON choral society’s antidote to SAMSON Messiah. However, over the n 1739 at least two Miltonic projects were urged upon Handel by a circle of wealthy supporters An Oratorio in 3 Acts by past two or three decades it including Jennens, the philosopher James Harris and the 4th Earl of Shaftesbury.
    [Show full text]
  • Bibliographic Information for Fifty-Three Unlocated Eighteenth-Century Items in Arnott and Robinson's English Theatrical
    Bibliographic Information for Fifty-three Unlocated Eighteenth-Century Items in Arnott and Robinson’s English Theatrical Literature, 1559-1900 By David Wallace Spielman In 1953, members of the Society for Theatre Research (STR) began the daunting task of revising Robert W. Lowe’s A Bibliographical Account of English Theatrical Literature (1888). In the first six years of the project, several editors came and went. As George Speaight says in his introduction, “the work proved too much for our part-time labours.”1 James Fullarton Arnott and John William Robinson were brought on board in 1959 to bring the project to completion. The resulting volume appeared in print in 1970 as English Theatrical Literature, 1559-1900: A Bibliography (hereafter A&R), one of the great achievements of the Society. A&R incorporates and substantially expands Lowe’s bibliography and has been a basic reference source for theatre historians for almost forty years. Its utility prompted John Cavanagh to continue the project up through 1985 in his British Theatre: A Bibliography, 1901 to 1985.2 Lowe personally examined all the items that he could, and Arnott and Robinson followed Lowe’s precedent in their revision and expansion. As they admit in their preface, however, the editors were not able to see everything listed in the bibliography (xii). They included some items based solely on information received from sources they deemed reliable. The amount of information provided for these items varies widely, and those with no library location supplied have long been a source of frustration to scholars. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) has made full-text facsimile copies of a substantial number of these “unseen” items readily available.
    [Show full text]
  • Ballad Opera in England: Its Songs, Contributors, and Influence
    BALLAD OPERA IN ENGLAND: ITS SONGS, CONTRIBUTORS, AND INFLUENCE Julie Bumpus A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF MUSIC August 7, 2010 Committee: Vincent Corrigan, Advisor Mary Natvig ii ABSTRACT Vincent Corrigan, Advisor The ballad opera was a popular genre of stage entertainment in England that flourished roughly from 1728 (beginning with John Gay's The Beggar's Opera) to 1760. Gay's original intention for the genre was to satirize not only the upper crust of British society, but also to mock the “excesses” of Italian opera, which had slowly been infiltrating the concert life of Britain. The Beggar's Opera and its successors were to be the answer to foreign opera on British soil: a truly nationalistic genre that essentially was a play (building on a long-standing tradition of English drama) with popular music interspersed throughout. My thesis explores the ways in which ballad operas were constructed, what meanings the songs may have held for playwrights and audiences, and what influence the genre had in England and abroad. The thesis begins with a general survey of the origins of ballad opera, covering theater music during the Commonwealth, Restoration theatre, the influence of Italian Opera in England, and The Beggar’s Opera. Next is a section on the playwrights and composers of ballad opera. The playwrights discussed are John Gay, Henry Fielding, and Colley Cibber. Purcell and Handel are used as examples of composers of source material and Mr. Seedo and Pepusch as composers and arrangers of ballad opera music.
    [Show full text]