Management, Competition and Artistic Policy in London, 1861-70

This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Opera in 'the Donizettian Dark Ages' : management, competition and artistic policy in London, 1861-70. Ringel, Matthew Laurence The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 09. Oct. 2021 Opera in 'The Donizettian Dark Ages' Management, Competition and Artistic Policy in London, 186 1-70 Matthew L. Ringel Dissertation submitted for the Ph.D. degree in Historical Musicology King's College, University of London 7. ( Li)1N.) : Abstract Opera in 'The Donizettian Dark Ages' seeks to explain the development of opera repertoire in mid-nineteenth-century London through an examination of institutional and industrial context. Frederick Ciye and James Henry Mapleson, managers of the Royal Italian Opera and Her Majesty's Theatre during the 1 860s, have been dismissed for their dependence upon dated Italian operas instead of contemporary repertoire. The view that they lacked artistic integrity is unfair; each impresario followed an explicit policy to introduce new works to the London public. My study addresses the factors which led to a discrepancy between policy and practice. The lack of suitable venues for opera in London provoked a continuous string of operational and financial crises for the managers. A cumbersome process for securing performance rights, conservative aesthetics and the programming of the rival house each played a role in delimiting the number and type of new operas the managers considered importing to London. Production economics and the vicissitudes of rehearsals then determined whether or not an imported work actually appeared. Perhaps most influential, the hegemony of a star class of singers held direct implications for the size of the company and the strategic scheduling of certain operas within and across seasons. In sum, this study engages with the material forces which guided the ascent of repertory programming at one of the leading centres for Italian opera. A second theme addresses managers' attempts to restructure their institutions in ways which allowed them to circumvent the unappealing economics and programming constrictions associated with competition. A final chapter examines one such solution, an opera monopoly, and considers why it could not succeed. Throughout, this history of the Gye-Mapleson rivalry draws upon a range of newly discovered sources, most notably a complete collection of Frederick Gye's diaries. 2 Contents Preface 6 Introduction 9 Part 1 An Overview of Italian Opera in Mid-Nineteenth-Century London Chapter 1: The Opera Industry 19 The Griffin and the Colonel 19 The Roots of Opera Competition 23 Industry Structure 28 Chapter 2: Repertoire 46 The Italian Opera Tradition in London 46 Italian Opera Challenged 50 The Repertoire Freeze of the 1860s and I 870s 58 Towards an Explanation 71 Part 2 Opera Management and Programming, 1861-67 Chapter 3: Management Strategies Amidst A Venue Crisis 77 A New House and New Debt 78 Gye's Management Strategies 86 James Henry Mapleson and the Search for Security 97 Mapleson's Management Strategies 104 Influence on Repertoire 114 Chapter 4: The Pursuit of New Works 118 Commitment to Novelty 118 Finding New Works 121 Aesthetic Evaluations 124 Ease of Preparation 132 Exclusive Performance Rights 142 Competitive Programming and Rehearsals 155 Box Office 166 3 Chapter 5: Singers and Schedules 170 Insecurity in the Singer Market 174 Salaries 178 Roles 191 Length of Engagement and Frequency of Appearance 200 Scheduling 209 Outside Influences on the Opera Schedule 220 Part 3 The Industry Realigns, 1868-70 Chapter 6: Opera Monopolies 226 Opera in Crisis and the Roots of Monopoly 227 Monopoly Formed 232 Artistic Decisions in the Coalition 237 Monopoly Challenged 255 A Hint of Innovation 260 Monopoly Dissolves 266 Afterword 275 Appendices 284 Bibliography 300 4 Tables 1. The decline of novelty. 59 2. Repertoire of Gye's company, 186 1-78 by perfonnance frequency. 61 3. Repertoire of Mapleson's company, 186 1-78 by performance frequency 63 4. Gye repertoire structure, 1861-78. 66 5. Mapleson repertoire structure, 1861-78. 67 6. Royal Italian Opera financial statements, 1861-70. 89 7. Comparison of Mapleson budget and Gye financials. 106 8. Inventories. 135 9. Box-office income for star singers. 171 10. Faust box-office income for Royal Italian Opera sopranos, 1871-82. 172 11. Monthly salaries at the Royal Italian Opera. 179 12. Top three singers' salaries as a percent of total singer budget. 186 13. Lead times. 211 5 Preface The extensive use of a new archival resource, and one as stylistically inconsistent as Frederick Gye's collection ofjournals as manager of the Royal Italian Opera, demands a clear statement of editorial policy. My approach seeks foremost to impart a sense of the diaries' characteristic flow and style. Entries cited will retain Gye's spelling, punctuation, capitalization and method of emphasis but omit his deletions unless these illuminate a certain point. Abbreviations such as 'd' ('would') are written in flu. Numbers with four digits are given with a comma, consistent with figures provided elsewhere in the study. Gye used dashes instead of periods to separate his sentences and my transcriptions retain these. However, to enhance legibility, I have used a single dash (-) to denote sentence breaks and a double dash (--) to indicate an em-dash, a continuation of thought. Occasionally, I have added punctuation and forenames for the sake of clarity. Since the titling of operas performed in Italian in mid-nineteenth-century London was never consistent, it too demands specific editorial guidelines. Most French and German operas received Italian names; for example, Les Hzigzienots became Gil Ugonotli. Sometimes the two opera managers, Gye and James Henry Mapleson, assigned different names to the same opera. Thus, Her Majesty's Opera performed Faust (not translated into Fausto as at some continental Italian theatres) and the Royal Italian Opera gave Faust et Marguerita Nevertheless, managers' announcements and critics' notices alternated the original and Italian titles indiscriminately, even within the space of a single prospectus or review. In this study, references to operas give titles in the original language. Allusions to a specific performance of an Italian version give the translated title in parentheses if substantially different from the original. Since several chapters include the names of many operas, the first reference uses a full title (Ii barbiere di Sivigiia) but for the sake of concision, subsequent references use an abbreviated title (Ii barbiere) and long lists of operas drop the article (Barbiere). Obscure operas, however, 6 retain full titles throughout this study, as do any works which abridgement might confuse (L'éioile du Nord should not become L'éloi/e). A further word is necessary regarding the nomenclature of the theatre located at the Covent Garden site. As a playhouse in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, the theatre was known as the 'Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.' After its conversion to an Italian opera house in 1846, the term 'Royal Italian Opera' referred to both the opera company and the opera house located in Covent Garden. For the 1860s, therefore, 'Royal Italian Opera' is appropriate for any references to the theatre's general use or specific use for Gye's Italian opera activities, but 'Covent Garden Theatre' should be used for performances given by other opera or concert presenters outside of the London season. The familiar pseudonym 'Covent Garden' should be avoided in scholarly writing about this period, but has become so common that it would be pedantic to belabour the point. It is worthwhile to note that even today, the correct term is 'The Royal Opera House,' not 'Covent Garden.' A thesis of this nature and duration incurs many debts. I am grateful to the British Marshall Commemoration Commission for supporting me in my course of study. Curtis Price deserves thanks for supervising my research and writing, even during his transition to the principalship of the Royal Academy of Music. Irena Auerbach, Secretary to the Music Department at King's College, has provided heroic support. The Royal Opera House Archives has granted extensive access to the Frederick Gye Diary Collection and many other unexplored primary materials. Archivist Francesca Franchi and her associates were generous and hospitable during my many months of work there. I am also grateful to members of the senior management of the Royal Opera House, who have given me substantial amounts of their time and provided unique opportunities for me to learn about the challenges facing opera administrators today. Jeremy Isaacs, Nicholas Payne, Peter Katona, John Harrison, Clive Timms, David Pilcher, Keith Cooper and his assistant Sin Fischer-Hansen deserve special mention.

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