1. Kliger, Samuel, The Goths in England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952): 33–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Wagner, Peter, “Anticatholic Erotica in Eighteenth-Century England,” Erotica and the Enlightenment, ed. Wagner, Peter (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 1991): 169Google Scholar.

3. Kliger, Goths, 105.

4. Members of the third group were the least common (there were only five): Dryden and Grabu's Albion and Albanius (1685), Congreve and Eccles's Semele (1707, not performed), Addison and Clayton's Rosamond (1707), Hughes and Galliard's Calypso and Telemachus (1712), and Galliard's Circe (1719). (Theobald and Galliard's one-act Pan and Syrinx (1718), while called an opera on its title page, is clearly a masque.) The other all-sung works that were known as operas at the time were Anglicized Italian operas performed in full or partial translation and, as such, are not included in this category.

5. Locke, Matthew, preface to The English Opera, or the Vocal Musick in Psyche, in Musica Britannica, ed. Tilmouth, Michael, vol. 51 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1986): xix–xxGoogle Scholar; Shadwell, Thomas, preface to Psyche, in The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell, ed. Summers, Montague, vol. 2 (London: Fortune Press, 1927): 279–280Google Scholar.

6. Dryden, John, preface to Albion and Albanius, in The Works of John Dryden, ed. Miner, Earl, vol. 15 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976): 3–13Google Scholar; Purcell, Henry, preface to Dioclesian, ed. SirBridge, Frederick J. and Pointer, John (New York: Broude Brothers, 1963): i–iiGoogle Scholar; Dryden, , dedication to King Arthur, in The Works of John Dryden, ed. SirScott, Walter, rev. George Saintsbury, vol. 8 (Edinburgh: n.p., 1884): 129–137Google Scholar; Preface to The Fairy Queen (1692; reprint, London: Cornmarket Press, 1969): A3r–A4vGoogle Scholar; Motteux, Peter Anthony, “An Account of Opera's,” Gentleman's Journal (London): 01 1692Google Scholar; Clayton, Thomas, preface to Arsinoe, Queen of Cyprus, An opera, after the Italian manner: all sung, by Tomaso Stanzani (London, 1705)Google Scholar; Dennis, John, “An Essay on the Opera's After the Italian Manner,” The Critical Works of John Dennis, ed. Hooker, Edward Niles, vol. 1 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1939–1943): 382–393Google Scholar; Joseph Addison, prologue to Phaedra and Hippolitus, by Smith, Edmund, in The Works of Mr. Edmund Smith (London, 1714): 10Google Scholar; Congreve, William, preface to Semele, An Opera, in Works (London, 1710): 156–157Google Scholar; Granville, George, preface to The British Enchanters, in Poems Upon Several Occasions (Dublin, 1732): 109–114Google Scholar. My reference to such works essentially will be confined to those listed here. For later examples by Baker, Corey, Cibber, Taverner, Moore, Smythe, and Fielding, see Nicoll, Allardyce, A History of English Drama 1660–1900, vol. 2Google Scholar; and Early Eighteenth-Century Drama, 3d. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952): 230–233Google Scholar.

7. Dean, Winton, Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (1959; reprint, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990): 154Google Scholar.

8. Locke, preface to The English Opera, xx.

9. Curtis Price notes that, while English playwrights and theatre composers of the period had no objection to people speaking in music, the practice was contextualized by spoken dialogue. “The Critical Decade for English Music Drama: 1700–1710,” Harvard Library Bulletin 26 (1978): 40.Google Scholar This would explain why Locke boasts of offering recitative in Psyche in one breath and yet insists that spoken “interlocutions” must remain to retain Psyche's Englishness; conversely, Locke appears to be proffering recitative as a continental borrowing, so perhaps his concern is to limit what is taken.

10. Even William Davenant's The Siege of Rhodes (1656), now sometimes considered the first English opera, was not called an “opera” by its creator. As Donald Jay Grout observes of Davenant's production, “Apparently in order to avoid trouble with the Puritan authorities, the acts were called Ôentries' and the whole spectacle was known as…” ‘A Representation by the art of Prospective in Scenes and the Story sung in Recitative Musick.’” A Short History of Opera 1, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965): 136.Google Scholar It is now generally thought that Davenant would not have had the work sung had the decision been left to him; Dryden confirms this opinion. “Of Heroique Playes,” The Conquest of Granada, Part I, in The Works of John Dryden 11, eds. Loftis, John and Rodes, David Stuart (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978): 9Google Scholar.

11. Shadwell, preface to Psyche, 279.

12. Richard Luckett argues that most of what English Restoration musical drama was imitating was French, although he acknowledges that few commentators at the time seem to be aware of this. “Exotick but Rational Entertainments: the English Dramatick Operas,” English Drama: Forms and Development, eds. Axton, Marie and Williams, Raymond (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977): 123–141.Google Scholar The facts that Betterton was sent to France by Charles II to study the staging of opera and that composers John Banister and Pelham Humfrey had both been sent there to learn about developments in French musical practice (and of course that Charles II himself had also been there, where he probably knew the composer Cambert) confirm this. Moreover, while no Italian opera was seen in London before 1705, no less than five French operas were brought to the Restoration court or theatres (Bremond's, SebastienBallet et Musique pour le divertissement du Roi de la Grande Bretagne, court, circa 01 1674Google Scholar; Perrin, and Cambert's, Ariane ou le Mariage de Bacchus, Drury Lane, 30 03 1674Google Scholar, with additions by Grabu; Perrin and Cambert's Pomone, court, circa 1674; Gilbert, and Cambert's, Les Peines et les Plaisirs de l'Amour, court, circa 1674Google Scholar; and Lully, and Quinault's, tragedie-lyrique Cadmus et Hermione, Dorset Garden, 1686).Google Scholar Charles also saw another French opera, Mme de la Roche Guilhen's Rare en Tout, performed at court by a visiting French troupe on 29 May 1677. Indeed, the performances of French opera in the early 1670s seem to have been part of a serious, albeit abortive, effort on the part of the king to establish a French language Royal Academy of Music in London. Danchin, Pierre, “The Foundation of the Royal Academy of Music in 1674 and Pierre Perrin's Ariane,” Theatre Survey 25 (1984): 55–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hume, Robert D., “The Sponsorship of Opera in London, 1704–1720,” Modern Philology 85, No. 4 (1988): 422CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Dennis Arundell notes that Grabu, whose English rivals considered him inferior, had come to England in 1665; shortly thereafter he managed to obtain a court appointment, being named Master of the King's Music in 1667. The Critic at the Opera (London: Ernest Benn, 1957): 105.Google Scholar Price notes that Purcell was probably also furious at being passed over for Albion and Albanius and that Grabu's score may not be as inferior as has been thought. Henry Purcell and the London Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984): 267Google Scholar.

14. Quoted in Price, Henry Purcell, 289.

15. Dryden, preface to Albion, 10–11. As Price notes in Henry Purcell, “despite the king's desire to see a French-style drama, Dryden wrote instead an English opera similar to the 1674 Tempest, that is, a play ‘Written in blank Verse, adorn'd with Scenes, Machines, Songs and Dances.’ … What prompted the change of plans is unknown; one would guess that the king's Francophile tastes prevailed over Dryden's chauvinism” (289).

16. Price, on whom this paragraph chiefly draws, argues that the fact that Albion and Albanius was not a great success “was owing more to political circumstances [i.e., Monmouth's invasion in June 1685] than to artistic shortcomings.” See Henry Purcell, Chapter 6.

17. Dryden, preface to Albion, 3.

18. Hume, “Sponsorship,” 421.

19. Dryden, preface to Albion, 3. Westrup, J.A. rightly notes that this was an outmoded idea of Italian opera, which had “long ceased to confine itself to the supernatural and had turned eagerly to purely historical themes.” Henry Purcell, rev. ed. (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1980): 109Google Scholar.

20. Locke wrote much of the music for Shadwell's adaptation (April 1674, Duke's, Dorset Garden) of the Davenant and Dryden The Tempest of 1667, to which Dryden refers in the preface. Dryden was almost certainly aware of Locke's preface to Psyche, because Locke's music to The Tempest was published in The English Opera along with the vocal music to Psyche. In light of this, Dryden's ideas of opera bear an intertextual relationship with Locke's. That Dryden ignores or plainly contradicts Locke strikes me as significant.

21. Dryden, , preface to Amphitryon, The Works of John Dryden, ed. Miner, Earl, vol. 15 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976): 225Google Scholar, underlining mine.

22. Dedication to King Arthur, 136.

23. Dryden alludes in his dedication to the fact that he wrote the work seven years previously. Yet he also explains that he has modified it considerably in the meantime: “I have been obliged so much to alter the first design…that it is now no more what it was formerly…” Dedication to King Arthur, 135. Moreover, he implies that Purcell proved a better collaborator than Grabu: “There is nothing better than what I intended, but the music; which has since arrived to a greater perfection in England than ever formerly; especially passing through the artful hands of Mr. Purcell, who has composed it with so great a genius…” (135). See also Price, Henry Purcell, Chapter 7.

24. Psyche and Dioclesian were not exactly equivalent despite the fact that both are semi-operatic. As Price, in Henry Purcell, 5, has noted, there is an important distinction between Psyche and Purcell's major stage works: “[Psyche] came much closer to pushing England into the operatic mainstream than did Purcell's major stage compositions, which represent a marked retrenchment.” Yet, as Price notes later in the same book, King Arthur is, contrary to what we would expect, actually more similar to Psyche than to Dioclesian (295). Still, I tend to regard Psyche, Dioclesian, and King Arthur as similar enough to justify my statement that the latter two are modeled to a greater or lesser extent on the first.

25. A notable example of Dryden's earlier disdain for the genre can be found in his “Prologue Spoken at the Opening of the New House” (1674). Still, a tantalizing aberration must be addressed. In 1677 (only three years after the disdainful prologue) Dryden published The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man, which is called “an Opera” on its title page. According to Scott and Saintsbury, this work, based on Paradise Lost, “was intended for perusal only,” for the subject was such that the opera would not have been permitted to be performed (The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man, The Works of John Dryden, ed. SirScott, Walter, rev. George Saintsbury, vol. 5 [Edinburgh, 1883]: 97).Google Scholar Dryden himself says surprisingly little about the musico-dramatic nature of this work, despite having prefaced it with a long critical essay. Still, he begins this essay with a telling comment: “To satisfy the curiosity of those who will give themselves the trouble of reading the ensuing poem, I think myself obliged to render them a reason why I publish an opera which was render them a reason why I publish an opera which was never acted” (111). Here Dryden establishes that the printed version of his work is a poem despite the fact that The State of Innocence is by his own account generically “an opera” and that the printed version contains stage directions calling for spectacular effects that resemble those of the earlier operatic The Tempest.

He says nothing more about the operatic nature of the work directly. However, he does address the question of representing (“imaging”) supernatural beings in “poetry,” reasoning that because angels—as well as “fairies, pigmies, and the extraordinary effects of magic”—are founded on popular belief, they are still “an imitation, though of other men's fancies” (121). Then he adds that “and thus are Shakespeare's ‘Tempest,’ his ‘Midsummer Night's Dream,’ and Ben Jonson's ‘Masque of Witches’ to be defended” (121). The first and last of these were musico-dramatic stage works, and the second later became musico-dramatic when it was adapted for The Fairy Queen in 1692. Dryden thus implies a connection between magical creatures and musico-dramatic representation. I believe that this connection possibly explains why he set The State of Innocence as an opera: despite his early disdain for opera, he saw no other way to render The State of Innocence as a drama while conforming to the classical laws of decorum that he held in high esteem. As I have shown, by the time of Albion and Albanius eight years later—and with his disdain safely behind him—Dryden was able to make explicit the connection between “opera” and supernatural personages and, on that later occasion, happily, his subject was more amenable to production.

26. Purcell, preface to Dioclesian, i–ii. This preface was probably a collaborative effort between Dryden and Purcell (see Price, Henry Purcell: 264–265). Dryden's involvement might account for the ambivalence toward English composers expressed here.

27. Price, in Henry Purcell (321–322), suggests the adaptor was Betterton. Most recently, David Dyregrov argues that the actor Jo. Haines was responsible. “Jo. Haines as Librettist for Purcell's The Fairy Queen,” Restoration and 18th-Century Theatre Research 7:2 (1992): 29–54Google Scholar.

28. Preface to The Fairy Queen, A3r.

29. Neighbarger, Randy Lyn, “Music in London Shakespeare Productions, 1660–1830” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1988): 36Google Scholar.

30. Motteux, “An Account of Opera's,” 5.

31. See Milhous, Judith and Hume, Robert D., Vice Chamberlain Coke's Theatrical Papers 1706–1715 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Milhous, Judith, Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1695–1708 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1979)Google Scholar; and Hume, “Sponsorship,” to whom I am indebted for this account. See also Price's “Critical Decade.”

32. Hume, “Sponsorship,” 422.

33. Milhous and Hume, Coke Papers, xvii.

34. Performance details for operas and semi-operas are, unless otherwise indicated, drawn from the daily calendar listings in Avery, Emmett L. et al. , eds., The London Stage 1660–1800, Part 2: 1700–29, vols. 1 and 2 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–1968).Google Scholar It should be remembered that the actual number of performances cannot be ascertained precisely via The London Stage, for some performances (notably several given at the Haymarket during its first two seasons) were not advertised in contemporary newspapers; others may have been advertised but later were canceled or substituted.

35. Milhous and Hume, Coke Papers, 1.

36. Hume [“Sponsorship” (424)] and Price [“Critical Decade” (49)] disagree on this point. Price says Camilla's cast included “a few exotic newcomers” while Hume, who names all the performers, says all were from the English company.

37. As Price notes in “Critical Decade,” “It had been five years since either theatre had presented a new semi-opera, although the Drury Lane company frequently mounted revivals of Purcell's famous works even after the initial success of Arsinoe” (48). He adds that the long run of The British Enchanters probably prompted the Drury Lane company to revive King Arthur on 2 March 1706 (48).

38. Hume, “Sponsorship,” 424.

39. Hume, Ibid.

40. Camilla was performed in London 63 times from 1706 through 1709 and 112 times by 1728. Lindgren, Lowell, “Camilla and The Beggar's Opera,” Philological Quarterly 59 (1980): 46Google Scholar; Hume, “Sponsorship,” 428.

41. Milhous and Hume, Coke Papers, 6. Thomyris lasted eight nights. New English works prepared for Drury Lane but not performed include Semele, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Orlando Furioso. See Price, Curtis A., Music in the Restoration Theatre (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1979): 121, 123Google Scholar.

42. For a detailed account of this event see Milhous, Thomas Betterton, Chapter 7.

43. Love's Triumph was an adaptation by Motteux of Ottoboni's La Pastorella, with music by Cesarini, Del Violone, and Gasparini supplied by Dieupart. White, Eric Walter notes that it was “given in English, with the exception of the part of Liso. which was sung by Valentino [also known as Valentini] in Italian.” A Register of First Performances of English Operas and Semi-Operas from the 16th Century to 1980 (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1983): 20Google Scholar; it ran six nights that season.

44. Milhous and Hume, Coke Papers, xxii.

45. Milhous and Hume, Coke Papers, 49.

46. Quoted in Arundell, Critic at the Opera, 173.

47. Ibid., 174.

48. Ibid.

49. Hume, “Sponsorship,” 426.

50. Thomas Clayton, preface to Arsinoe, A2r.

51. Fiske, Roger, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century, 2d, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986): 32Google Scholar.

52. Ibid.

53. Although Arsinoe was all sung, it was presented in effect as semi-opera—with fragments of other pieces, mostly acts of plays—and thus was not as radical an innovation as it seems to be. Price, “Critical Decade,” 44. The success of Arsinoe thus cannot be taken to be any measure of English acceptance of Italian operatic convention. For this we must wait for Camilla.

54. Edward Niles Hooker quotes a letter from Dennis to his friend, “Mr. D'Avenant,” dated 20 March 1706, in which Dennis writes of having recently had his “Essay on the Opera's” printed, “the publishing which has been retarded by accidents of which it is needlesse to give an account Here” (quoted in The Critical Works of John Dennis, vol. 1, 520).Google Scholar Hooker notes “the date of the letter will serve as an approximate date of the publication of the Essay,” but Lindgren, in “Camilla and The Beggar's Opera,” 48n, has noted that the “Essay” was advertised as “Just Publish'd” in The Post-Man for 11 April 1706. In any case, in light of the contents and date of the letter, it appears unlikely that Dennis had seen The Temple of Love on 7 March before writing the “Essay,” and Camilla could not have influenced the attack since it premiered 30 March.

55. Dennis, of course, wrote a semi-opera himself with John Eccles in 1698, Rinaldo and Armida, and a libretto of his for a work called The Masque of Orpheus and Euridice—of which there appears to be no surviving score and no recorded performance—appeared in The Muses Mercury (London), 02 1707.Google Scholar He states in the “Essay” that “There is no Man living who is more convinc'd than my self of the Power of Harmony, or more penetrated by the Charms of Musick. I know very well that Musick makes a considerable Part both of Eloquence and of Poetry; and therefore to endeavour to decry it fully, would be as well a foolish, as an ungrateful Task, since the very Efforts which we should make against it, would only serve to declare its Excellence; it being impossible to succeed in them, but by Supplies which we should borrow from its own Harmony.” “An Essay on the Opera's,” 385.

56. Dennis reiterated and elaborated his attack in 1711 with his “Essay upon Publick Spirit,” for which readers should see The Critical Works of John Dennis, vol. 2, 393–396.Google Scholar The primary concern of this attack is to reveal the harm of Italian opera to the state.

57. Similarly ironic in retrospect is a comment by Thomas Rymer who, in 1693, had objected even to English semi-opera on grounds comparable to those argued by Motteux and Dennis in relation to all-sung Italianate opera. (Rymer objects to the English trend of adapting the French operatic tradition in presenting works such as Charles Davenant's Circe. See Rymer, Thomas, “A Short View of Tragedy,” The Critical Works of Thomas Rymer, ed. Zimansky, Curt A. [1956; reprint, Westport, Ct: Greenwood Press, 1971], 88–89Google Scholar.) Indeed, Jeremy Collier in 1698 had deplored all playhouse music as insidiously designed “to banish all Gravity and Scruple, and lay Thinking and Reflection a sleep.” Collier writes that “A Lewd Play with good Musick is like a Loadstone Arm'd, it draws much stronger than before…Musick is almost as dangerous as Gunpowder.” Collier, Jeremy, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698; reprint, Menston, Yorks.: Scolar Press, 1971): 278–279Google Scholar.

58. Fiske, English Theatre Music, 45.

59. Addison, prologue to Phaedra and Hippolitus, 10.

60. Price, Music in the Restoration, 123.

61. Ibid. On a happier note, the libretti of both of these operas were adopted by other composers later in the century. Thomas Augustine Arne's setting of Rosamond was first performed in 1733 and proved a popular success for many years. Handel's setting of Semele, while it failed the year of its first performance (1744), is today a popular work.

62. Congreve, preface to Semele, 156–157.

63. I am indebted for the identification of these works as precursors to Lincoln, Stoddard, “The First Setting of Congreve's Semele,” Music and Letters 44:2 (1963): 108Google Scholar.

64. Lincoln, 112.

65. Price, in Music in the Restoration (123), also challenges the long-held idea that Semele was planned for production at the Haymarket (as stated, for example, in Dean, Oratorios, 366), thereby suggesting persuasively that it was in fact intended for Drury Lane in 1706–7;. For speculation on why Semele was not performed see Price, Music in the Restoration, 123–124.

66. Price, Curtis, “English Traditions in Handel's Rinaldo,” in Handel Tercentenary Collection, eds. Sadie, Stanley and Hicks, Anthony (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1987): 122Google Scholar.

67. Details of the composition and content of this work can be found in Lincoln, Stoddard, “The Anglicization of Amadis de Gaul,” On Stage and Off, Eight Essays in English Literature, eds. Ehrstine, John W. et al. (n.p.: Washington State University Press, 1968): 45–52Google Scholar.

68. Granville, preface to The British Enchanters, 109.