Even if London music lovers had not seen an Italian opera, they became acquainted with the Italian musical style through Italian songs and singers through their presence on the London musical scene: performing at court, in public music-meetings, at private homes, in the Chapel Royal, and in London theatres (as stand-alone concerts, before or after plays, or as entr’actes). Gradually, Italian vocal and instrumental music came to play a prominent role in English musical life – a process J. A. Westrup called ‘the gradual infiltration and eventual domination of Italian musicians’. This background conditioned English expectations and responses towards Italian opera. This experience with Italian singing is surveyed in this chapter.

Music at the Court of Charles II

The Restoration of Charles II brought a renewal of civic society and English musical life, stimulated by the import of both French and Italian music and musicians. In emulation of continental courts, Charles sponsored the arts to restore the legitimacy and prestige of the Stuart court. His reign is known for the King’s own taste for the French fashions that he acquired during his periods of exile at the French court in 1646 to 1648 and 1651 to 1654 – and especially the European taste for French dance and dance music. He likely saw the young Louis XIV and Lully dance and heard the earliest ballet music by Lully. The English fashion for French taste is reflected in plays of the period, though not always favourably, especially as caricatured, most memorably, for example, in Sir Fopling Flutter in George Etherege’s comedy The Man of Mode (11 March 1676).

At his return to England, Charles quickly reconstituted the King’s Musick, establishing his own Twenty-Four Violins using a core of pre-Commonwealth musicians. French dance music so inflected Charles’s taste that the musical amateur and writer on music Roger North recalled that the King ‘could not bear any musick to which he could not keep the time’. Charles restored the Chapel Royal and its services, choir, and organ. He wanted variety and novelty in its services, which now veered away from the severe Jacobean style. The new style of anthems cultivated by Pelham Humfrey, Henry Purcell, and John Blow had verse solos, string ritornellos, and dance rhythms to appeal to the monarch’s taste.