No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Little attention has ever been paid to a pair of mid-career flops by Thomas Augustine Arne. Henry and Emma died in one night in 1749; Don Saverio struggled through three nights amidst hisses in 1750. Roger Fiske points out in a brief discussion that the latter is of some historical significance: it was a pioneering attempt to mount an English form of opera buffa on the London stage. Ten years later, Arne's Thomas and Sally was to succeed in persuading London audiences to accept such conventions, but in 1750 the time was apparently not yet ripe. These obscure failures have not attracted much critical notice, because while librettos of both survive, only the overture to Henry and Emma and one song from Don Saverio are extant.
We wish to thank Prof Nancy A Mace for advice in preparing this material for publication
1 Neither is mentioned in Hubert Langley's very superficial Doctor Arne (Cambridge, 1938) John A. Parkinson, An Index to the Vocal Works of Thomas Augustine Arne and Michael Arne, Detroit Studies in Music Bibliography, 21 (Detroit, 1972), notes that the music is almost entirely lostGoogle Scholar
2 Fiske, Roger, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century (2nd edn, Oxford, 1986), 215–16Google Scholar
3 John A Parkinson, ‘Arne, Thomas Augustine’, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed Stanley Sadie, 4 vols (London, 1992), i, 206–10.Google Scholar
4 London, Public Record Office, E 112/1223, no. 2965. Quotations otherwise unidentified are from this source. We have silently expanded some abbreviations and added a few full stops at the ends of sentences for clarity, but have not corrected spelling Exchequer records have rarely been used by literary and musicological scholars, but by the mid-seventeenth century virtually any case that could be brought in Chancery could equally well be filed in Exchequer See Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, ‘Eighteenth-Century Equity Lawsuits in the Court of Exchequer as a Source for Historical Research’, forthcoming in Historical ResearchGoogle Scholar
5 Parkinson in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (i, 208) rather oddly credits Prior as the librettist; Eric Walter White makes the plausible but mistaken assumption that Arne wrote the book himself (see A History of English Opera, London, 1983, 197).Google Scholar
6 For the text of the source poem, see The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, ed H. Bunker Wright and Monroe K. Spears, 2 vols. (2nd edn, Oxford, 1971), i, 278–300Google Scholar
7 Fiske is in error when he describes Henry and Emma as ‘all sung’ (English Theatre Music, 207) Huntington Library Larpent MS 79 makes clear that the work was a spoken play with an overture and 13 songs.Google Scholar
8 See Songs in Henry and Emma (London printed for the author, and sold by Messrs Manby & Cox, 1749). Of the song texts in Larpent MS 79 and this collection, the only one recognized by Prior's editors is excerpts from ‘An Ode’ ('While blooming Youth, and gay Delight / Sit on thy rosey Cheeks confest'), first published in the Gentleman's Journal of August 1692. See The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, i, 110–12 and ii, 863.Google Scholar
9 Available figures show that in 1747 Lowe made approximately £125 after house charges, £180 in 1748; £92 in 1750, all from productions in the current repertory For the first case, see Judith Milhous and Robert D Hume, ‘Receipts at Drury Lane Richard Cross's Diary for 1746–47’, Theatre Notebook, 49 (1995), 12–26 and 69–90 For the other two, see The London Stage, 1660–1800, pt 4 1747–1776, ed. George Winchester Stone, Jr (Carbondale, 1962). All performance dates are from this sourceGoogle Scholar
10 Arne also composed four (lost) songs for Venus and chorus in Henry and Emma mounted at Covent Garden on 13 April 1774 at Mrs Hartley's benefit. Except for the closing masque, Henry Bate simply excerpted sections from Prior's poem for this version (London T Davies, 1774). Palmer tried it for his benefit at Drury Lane on 20 April 1775, after which it vanishedGoogle Scholar
11 For an excellent account of his career, see Philip H Highfill, Jr, Kalman A Burnim and Edward A. Langhans, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, 16 vols. (Carbondale, 1973–93), ix, 372–5Google Scholar
12 Burney, Charles, A General History of Music from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period, 4 vols (London, 1776–89), ed Frank Mercer, 2 vols. (London, 1935, repr. New York, 1957), ii, 1010Google Scholar
13 Fielding got ten guineas each for The Old Debauchees and The Covent Garden Tragedy; Phillips got four guineas for The Livery Rake, Coffey five for The Merry Cobler, Langford two for The Lover his own Rival (see Judith Milhous and Robert D Hume, ‘Playwrights’ Remuneration in Eighteenth-Century London’, forthcoming).Google Scholar
14 Feather, John, Publishing, Piracy and Politics An Historical Study of Copyright in Britain (London, 1994), 69 By the 1770s and 1780s the act is more regularly cited, though still in a minority of cases On the putative common-law basis for copyright beyond the statutory term, see Saunders, David, Authorship and Copyright (London and New York, 1992), 59Google Scholar
15 Holt gives a very different text for the receipt ‘Received of Mr Lowe the Sum of Ten Guineas for the use of Henry and Emma on Friday the 31st of March last, Thomas Holt.’ Clearly one of them was misremembering or misrepresenting the terms of the receipt.Google Scholar
16 Hardly any testimony survives on the compensation paid to the devisers of benefit pieces Charles Dibdin does inform us that Brereton gave him £70 for an unperformed afterpiece he had written called The Quaker, which Brereton used for his benefit on 3 May 1775 and subsequently sold to Garrick for £100 for service at Drury Lane Dibdin provided both words and music. See The Professional Life of Mr Dibdin, 4 vols (London published by the Author, 1803), i, 145–6 We note from The London Stage, however, that the benefit netted Brereton a mere £36 1s 6d. He made money only by reselling the piece to Drury Lane, which was a rarity for such one-offsGoogle Scholar
17 On this venture, see Richard G. King and Saskia Willaert, ‘Giovanni Francesco Crosa and the First Italian Comic Operas in London, Brussels and Amsterdam, 1748–50’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 118 (1993), 246–75Google Scholar
18 MacMillan, Dougald, Catalogue of the Larpent Plays in the Huntington Library (San Marino, 1939), no 85.Google Scholar
19 Most of the Cross diaries survive in the Folger Shakespeare Library. Pertinent passages are printed under date in The London StageGoogle Scholar
20 Don Saverio; or, The Modern Traveller A Musical Drama As it is Perform ‘d at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane The Musick by Mr Arne (London J Watts, 1750)Google Scholar
21 Not transcribed as verse in the lawsuit. Emma sings this song in Henry and Emma, Act 1, scene iii (pp 5–6 of Larpent MS 79) It is given to Violante (Miss Norris) in Don Saverio It appears on the second page of text in both Larpent MS 35 and the printed libretto of Don Saverio (f B1v). The borrowing is the more conspicuous because it is the first ‘air’ in both showsGoogle Scholar
22 On Norris, see Highfill, Burnim and Langhans, A Biographical Dictionary, xi, 48.Google Scholar
23 A mark in the margin at this point probably implies that the judge hearing the case found this a telling claim or at least one to pursue further at the hearing.Google Scholar
24 Lowe gives the date of his contract as 16 July 1750, so he had a month in which to plan his benefit The fact that his partner was Miss Falkner increases the likelihood that she sang Emma in the performance at Covent GardenGoogle Scholar
25 Arne claims the latter, saying that he never responded to a written demand from Holt because no such agreement about future profits had ever been made and he looked ‘upon such Application as a Means or Tryal only to Get a Little money from this Defendant in his the Complainants Necessity'.Google Scholar
26 For a helpful discussion, see Rose, Mark, Authors and Owners The Invention of Copyright (Cambridge, MA, 1993), ch 5.Google Scholar
27 London John and Paul Knapton, 1747, repr. in Horace Walpole's Political Tracts with Two by William Warburton on Literary Property, with bibliographical notes by Stephen Parks (New York, 1974) Following quotations from pp 6, 20Google Scholar
28 On this dispute, see Rose, Authors and Owners, 80–2.Google Scholar
29 Macklin was able to stipulate that he receive one fifth of the net receipts of the first five nights after house charges, plus the whole of the net on the sixth night Even more extraordinarily, he was able to demand that the play not become part of the Drury Lane repertory, and that any additional performances would require fresh negotiation and remuneration. Macklin's agreement with Lacy and Garrick is preserved in British Library, Add MS.27,925. In 1761 he was able to get similar terms at Covent Garden for 16 performances On this altogether exceptional case, see Matthew J Kinservik, 'Love à la mode and Macklin's Return to the London Stage in 1759’, Theatre Survey, 37/2 (1996), 1–21Google Scholar
30 This practice is described with particulars of numerous cases in Recollections of the Life of John O'Keeffe Written by Himself, 2 vols (London Henry Colburn, 1826), and in James Boaden, Memoirs of Mrs Inchbald, 2 vols (London Richard Bentley, 1833)Google Scholar