Abstract
In 1656, Thomas Blount’s Dictionary: Interpreting all such Hard Words, as are now used in our refin’d English Tongue defined opera as a sung drama adorned with scenes designed according to the laws of perspective.l In London, public theatres that could accommodate such scenery were built from the 1660s onwards. William Davenant was the first to manage such a playhouse,2 and the new Italian stagecraft was so closely associated with operas that Davenant’s productions were termed operas, while his theatre was known as the opera house.3 The fascination with such designs resulted in the first explanation of their principles printed in English: Joseph Moxon’s Practical Perspective of 1670.4 Subsequently, any English play that featured stage spectacle could be called an opera, and many such plays contained musical diversions, sometimes including a completely sung masque. Dorset Garden Theatre was built to house such spectacles in 1671; its ornate proscenium arch, surmounted by a music room, is visible in the five settings engraved in a playbook of 1673.5
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Notes and References
T[homas] B[lount]: Glossographia: or, a Dictionary (London, 1656), s.v. Opera: ‘… In Italy it signifies a Tragedy, Tragi-Comedy, Comedy or Pastoral, which (being the studied work of a Poet) is not acted after the vulgar manner, but performed by Voyces in that way, which the Italians term Recitative, being likewise adorned with Scenes by Perspective, and extraordinary advantages by Musick. The Common Plays (which are not Opera’s) are performed ex tempore by the Actors, and are but in the nature of Farces or Gigs, wanting the above mentioned adornments.’
see Colin Visser: ‘Scenery and Technical Design’, The London Theatre World, 1660–1800, ed. R. D. Hume (Carbondale, 1980), 66–118
see various theatrical entries in Pepys’s diary, collected in Helen McAfee: Pepys on the Restoration Stage (New Haven, 1916), 65ff
see also Colley Cibber: An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, ed. B. R. S. Fone (Ann Arbor, 1968), 57
According to Moxon (London, 1670), 4, ‘the knowledge of Scenographie comprehends so much of the Art of Perspective, that without scruple many Authors call it Perspective’. Many of Moxon’s ensuing ‘Operations’ are `Scenographick’.
Elkanah Settle: The Empress of Morocco, a Tragedy, with Sculptures (London, 1673). All five are reproduced in Allardyce Nicoll: The Development of the Theatre (London, 4/1958), 166–7. The prison and masque scenes are in Sybil Rosenfeld: A Short History of Scene Design in Great Britain (Oxford, 1973), 46–7. Various spectacles at Dorset Garden are described by Rosenfeld, 51–7, and by Ferrand Spence in his preface to Charles, Marquis de St Evremond: Miscellanea (London, 1686).
see Richard Leacroft: The Development of the English Playhouse (Ithaca, 1973), 99–105
Edward Langhans: ‘The Theatres’, The London Theatre World, 1660–1800, 45–6, 64–5; and especially Graham Barlow: ‘From Tennis Court to Opera House’ (diss., U. of Glasgow, 1983), i, 256–434
see Winton Dean: Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (London, 1959), 36–7, 123, 264, 439. A stage direction in the autograph of Belshazzar is reproduced in Walter Gerstenberg, ed.: Composers’ Autographs, trans. Ernst Roth (London, 1968), i, Plate 44, and in Alec Hyatt King: Handel and His Autographs (London, 1967), Plate 18.
see Winton Dean: Handel and the Opera Seria (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1970), 123–37
The source for Handel’s (and thus Chrysander’s) descriptions in Ezio was the libretto for the second production of the work (Rome, 1729). According to Joachim Eisenschmidt: Die szenische Darstellung der Opern Georg Friedrich Händels auf der Londoner Bühne seiner Zeit (Wolfenbüttel, 1940–41), ii, 37, the scenic directions in Handel’s librettos’ stammen … stets aus dem italienischen Urtext’, which he illustrated with an example from Faramondo. For this opera, however, as for Ezio, Handel’s (and thus Chrysander’s) source was not the ‘Urtext’ (Venice, 1699), but rather the libretto for a later production (Rome, 1720). Many of Handel’s sources are identified in Reinhard Strohm: ‘Händel und seine italienischen Operntexte’, HJb 1975–6, 101–59, which is reprinted with revisions in R. Strohm: Essays on Handel and Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1985), 34–79.
Such handwritten emendations are infrequent. One in Lotario is cited in Colin Timms: ‘Handelian and Other Librettos in Birmingham Central Library’, ML, lxv (1984), 160. Another in Lotario, found in the two British Library copies listed by Timms and in the copy in F-Pc Rés. VS406, is the handwritten substitution of ‘Gallery’ for’ solitude’ in 3.ix. In Ariosti’s Vespasiano (1724), scene indications are added in ink in 2.xi and 3.xi in at least two copies (US-CA *IC7.H3321.724v and USWs PR1259.06.B3.v.1.cage (1)).
See, for example, the changes made in the 1730 edition of Giulio Cesare or the 1736 edition of Siroe. The alterations most often simplify a direction, e.g. ‘A Prison within the Castle design’d for Siroe’ became ‘Prison’.
Tito Manlio appeared (on 4 April 1717) ‘with New Scenes and all New Cloaths’. These scenes, perhaps created by Roberto Clerici, may have included the two settings that had been exhibited at performances of other operas on 15 May 1716 and 30 March 1717. See Emmett L. Avery: The London Stage, 1660–1800, II: 1700– 29 (Carbondale, 1960), i, 403, 443–4. See ibid, ii, 464–5, for the reappearance of at least one of these settings at Drury Lane Theatre on 12 and 19 Oct 1717.
The ten by Handel are Rinaldo, Teseo, Silla, Amadigi, Alessandro, Admeto, Riccardo I, Lotario, Orlando and Arianna in Creta. The ten by others are Etearco (1711), Ercole (1712), Calypso and Telemachus (1712), Numitore (1720), Act 1 of Muzio Scevola (1721), Dario (1725), Elpidia (1725), Lucio Vero (1727), Polifemo (1735) and Sabrina (1737).
see Leacroft, pp. 106–10. Various scenic properties designed for Handel’s productions are listed in Philip H. Highfill, jr.: ‘Rich’s 1744 Inventory of Covent Garden Properties’, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, v/1 (May 1966), 7–17; v/2 (Nov 1966), 12–26; and vi/1 (May 1967), 27–35
In the playtexts of 1706, the former is labelled ‘a tragedy’, the latter a ‘comick opera’. The former is an adaptation of a tragédie lyrique by Quinault; see Stoddard Lincoln: ‘The Anglicization of Amadis de Gaul’, On Stage and Off: Eight Essays in English Literature, ed. J. W. Ehrstine, J. R. Elwood and R. C. MacLean (Pullman, 1968), 46–52. Granville added an intriguing preface concerning opera in early eighteenth-century London when he reprinted the work in his Genuine Works in Verse and Prose (London, 1736), i, 157–240 (i, 193–294 in some copies).
They were presumably the ‘two famous Italian Painters (lately arriv’d from Venice)’ whose ‘entire Set of new Scenes’ was shown at performances of Pyrrhus and Demetrius and Camilla on 2 and 5 April 1709, respectively, according to The Daily Courant, nos. 2321 and 2323. This may be the same ‘new Scene’ that Heidegger had ‘engaged the Venetian Painters to make’ for Clotilda (first performed on 2 March 1709), according to the anonymous author of ‘A Critical Discourse on Opera’s and Musick in England’, appended to [François Raguenet:] A Comparison between the French and Italian Musick and Operas (London, 1709), 80. The only evidence that credits either painter with an entire production is found in the 1710 and 1712 editions of the Hydaspes libretto, where the scenes are attributed to’ signor Marco Rizzi of Venice’. They ‘had all been made expressly for the opera and were very fine, though not as costly as those in Italy’, according to Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach: London in 1710, trans. and ed. W. H. Quarrell and M. Mare (London, 1934), 18.
Lines 29–60 of a 120-line poem concerning ‘the Improvement of the Theatre, in the Hay-Market, so much talked of’, The British Apollo, iii/115 (15–18 Dec 1710), 2–3. The structural alterations made c 1709 are described in Daniel Nalbach: The King’s Theatre, 1704–1867 (London, 1972), 22–5; Cibber, pp. 172–3, 224–6; and Leacroft, pp. 102–5. Even the puppet shows at Punch’s Theatre featured ‘variety of Scenes and Machines after the Italian manner’, according to the advertisements in papers — e.g. The Post Boy (2 March 1710), The Post-Man (26 Dec 1710) and The Daily Courant (8 Feb 1712); one such scene is the frontispiece to [Thomas Burnet:] A Second Tale of a Tub: or, The History of Robert Powel the Puppet-Show-Man (London, 1715), reproduced and discussed in Richard Southern: Changeable Scenery: its Origin and Development in the British Theatre (London, 1952), Plates 26–7 and pp. 188–9.
These effects are summarized together with critiques from Joseph Addison’s Spectator in Dorothy Brewster: Aaron Hill: Poet, Dramatist, Projector (New York, 1913), 86–92; Rosenfeld, pp. 65–6; and Nalbach, pp. 137–40.
The careers and extant English works of Ricci and his companion Pellegrini are described in Edward Croft-Murray: Decorative Painting in England, 1537–1837 (London, 1962–70), ii, 264–5 and 253–6, respectively. Pellegrini remained in England until 1713 and returned for some months in 1719. Although Ricci stayed until 1716, he returned to Italy for some months in 1710: see Anthony Blunt and Edward Croft-Murray: Venetian Drawings … at Windsor Castle (London, 1957), 30–33. For his possible presence in Rome in 1711, see n. 23 below.
Seven are reproduced in Richard Leppert: ‘Imagery, Musical Confrontation and Cultural Difference in Early 18th-Century London’, Early Music, xiv (1986), 323–45. Six are in Eric Walter White: ‘The Rehearsal of an Opera’, Theatre Notebook, xiv (1959–60), 79–90 and Plates 1–6. Three of them are also in White: A History of English Opera (London, 1983), Plate 15. Three are likewise in Blunt and Croft-Murray, figs. 5–7. One is reproduced in colour in Christopher Hogwood: Handel (London, 1984), Plate V.
I am grateful to Sotheby, Parke, Bernet & Co. for kindly providing a glossy photograph and permission to reproduce this drawing, which is shown in their Catalogue of Old Master Drawings (London, 2 July 1984), no. 118. It is reproduced with helpful commentary in Franklin W. Robinson and John T. Paoletti, eds.: Italian Drawings from the Bick Collection (Hanover, New Hampshire, 1971), no. 37.
Six of them could have resembled some Ricci drawings reproduced in Blunt and Croft-Murray, Plates 67 (cf. 2.ix), 69 (1.vii), 70 (3.i), 71 (3.x), 73 (2.xiv) and 74 (3.vii). See Duncan Chisholm: ‘Handel’s Lucio Cornelio Silla: Its Problems and Context’, Early Music, xiv (1986), 65–6, for a list of earlier London operas that had sets similar to or identical with those in Silla. The location of an album containing 107 stage designs attributed to Marco Ricci is at present unknown; it is described in Fine Architectural and Decorative Drawings (London [Christie’s], 14 Dec 1982), no. 52.
In this respect, they resemble drawings by Filippo Juvarra, as pointed out in Blunt and Croft-Murray, pp. 41–2. According to a letter written by John Talman in Rome on 18 Nov 1711 (partly printed in Croft-Murray, Decorative Painting, i, 72), a’ signor Rizzi from Venice’, whom ‘everyone knows to be no more than a scene painter’, was’ setting out for England’. If this ‘Rizzi’ was Marco rather than his uncle Sebastiano, then Marco probably encountered Juvarra at a time when the latter was designing the operas produced in Rome by Cardinal Ottoboni. For reproductions of Juvarra’s Roman stage designs, see Mercedes Viale-Ferrero: Filippo Juvarra scenografo e architetto teatrale (Turin, 1970).
see the anonymous English translation, An Historical and Critical Account of the Theatres in Europe (London, 1741), 82–4. An anonymous Frenchman’s comments on the paucity of decorations in the London opera house in 1728 are printed in Winton Dean: ‘A French Traveller’s View of Handel’s Operas’, ML, lv (1974), 177–8.
The Rape of Proserpine (London, 4/1727), p. iv: ‘the vast Expence of procuring Foreign Voices does necessarily exclude those various Embellishments of Machinery, Painting, Dances, as well as Poetry it self, which have been always esteemed (except till very lately in England) Auxiliaries absolutely necessary to the Success of [operatic] Musick; and, without which, it cannot be long supported, unless by very great Subscriptions, of which we naturally grow tired in a few Years’.
see Sybil Rosenfeld and Edward Croft-Murray: ‘A Checklist of Scene Painters Working in Great Britain and Ireland in the 18th Century’, Theatre Notebook, xix (1964–5), 19, 57, and xx (1965–6), 36–7, 39; and Croft-Murray, Decorative Painting, ii, 190–91, 211–12, 274–6, 286–7. In the libretto for Numitore, the Academy’s first production, Clerici is credited with ‘the scenes’ and named ‘Engineer to the Royal Academy’. Some of these scenes may have been created in 1716–17; see n. 12 above. Tillemans and Goupy were ‘jointly imploy’d to paint a Sett of Scenes for the Opera house in the Haymarkett, which were much approved of’, according to George Vertue: ‘Register of Living Artists and Their Works’, GB-Lbm Add. 23076, f.16v. Vertue may have inappropriately placed this undated comment after one dated Nov 1724, since the only mentions of either artist in a libretto are in 1727, when Goupy is credited with the scenes for Admeto and Riccardo I: see Otto Erich Deutsch, Handel: a Documentary Biography (London, 1955), 176, 201, 216.
Doubts concerning the authenticity of many of his extant designs are registered in Bert O. States:’ servandoni’s Successors at the French Opera: Boucher, Boquet, Algieri, Girault’, Theatre Survey, iii (1962), 41, n.5. The only record of his activity at Vanbrugh’s theatre in the 1720s is a notice in the Mercure de France (Oct 1726), p. 2345: ‘Le Sieur Servandoni n’est en France que depuis deux ans, & il s’y est déjà acquis beaucoup de reputation dans les ouvrages de perspective, ausquels il excelle. Il… a déjà fait beaucoup d’ouvrages de cette espèce en Italie & en Angleterre. On voit à l’Opéra de Londres sept Décorations de sa main.’
They are in the Albertina Museum, Vienna, and have previously been reproduced — e.g. in Joseph Gregor: Monumenta Scenica: Denkmäler des Theaters (Vienna, 1924–30), ii, Plate 16, and Alois M. Nagler: A Source Book in Theatrical History (New York, 1959), 316.
for discussion and illustrations see Mercedes Viale-Ferrero: La scenografia del ′700 e i fratelli Galliari (Turin, 1963)
British Museum, Prints and Drawings, Burney collection, ix, P.65.N.101. This undated and untitled watercolour is customarily considered to be a depiction of Vanbrugh’s stage, c 1705–10; but see the questions raised in Southern, 182–7, and especially in Barlow, i, 348–67.
British Museum, Prints and Drawings, C.C.2.28, described in Frederick G. Stephens: Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, ii (London, 1873), no. 1769. The print survives in several states, described ibid, nos. 1768 and 1770.
see Deutsch, p. 158 and Plate 9
see Lowell Lindgren: ‘La carriera di Gaetano Berenstadt, contralto evirato (ca. 1690–1735)’, RIM, xix (1984), 58–9
An Epistle from S[igno]r S[enesin]o to S[ignor]a F[austin]a (London, 1727); copies are in GB-Lbm 11630.h.62 and US-CA *fEC7.A100.727e2
see Mitchell Wells: ‘Spectacular Scenic Effects of the Eighteenth-Century Pantomime’, Philological Quarterly, xvii (1938), 67–81; and Paul Sawyer: ‘The Popularity of Various Types of Entertainment at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Covent Garden Theatres, 1720–33’, Theatre Notebook, xxiv (1970), 154–63. Ten pantomime scenarios of 1718–27 are reprinted in Viola Papetti: Arlecchino a Londra: La pantomima inglese, 1700–28 (Naples, 1977).
The painting, in the collection of Mrs Allardyce Nicoll, has been reproduced and discussed in Allardyce Nicoll: The Garrick Stage: Theatres and Audiences in the Eighteenth Century, ed. S. Rosenfeld (Manchester, 1980), frontispiece and p. 174; and in Geoffrey Ashton and Iain Mackintosh: Royal Opera House Retrospective, 1732–1982 (London, 1982), no. 191. (Only the latter reproduction is in colour.) Dawes’s statues and motto are reminiscent of those in a caricature in [James Miller:] Harlequin-Horace, or The Art of Modern Poetry (London, 3/1735), which is reproduced in Ashton and Mackintosh, no. 199, and Clive Chapman: ‘A 1727 Pantomime: The Rape of Proserpine’, MT, cxxii (1981), 808.
see Edward Croft-Murray, John Devoto: a Baroque Scene Painter (London, 1953); Rosenfeld and Croft-Murray, xix, 51–2; and Philip H. Highfill, jr. and others: A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800 (Carbondale, 1973–), iv, 351–4, and ix, 185
Department of Prints and Drawings, 1891–6–27–1 (1–91) and 1891–6–27–3
1891–6–27–1 (17–18), copied from engravings in Teodosio il giovane. The two sketches of no. 18 are reproduced together with the engravings in Croft-Murray: John Devoto, Plates 6–8. Juvarra’s drawings and Teodosio’s engravings for all three sets are in Viale-Ferrero: Filippo Juvarra, Plates 18, 22 and 36.
Juvarra’s visit is reported in a letter written by Paolo Antonio Rolli to Giuseppe Riva in August of 1719, in I-MOe Autografoteca Campori, s.v. Rolli: ‘È stato in Londra D. Filippo Juvara, quel bravo Architetto siculo che facea le belle scene d’Ottoboni in Cancelleria a Roma. Egli è al servizio del Re dell’Alpi [Victor Amadeus II] e venia da Portugallo, dove fu dal suo Re mandato a quell’altro Re [John V] per la direzzione d’un Palazzo e d’una Catedrale. Fu rubato di molta somma, mentre andava a spasso presso all’alto Bosco nel Coppé con l’Inviato portughese [Jacinto Borges Pereira de Castro], ma che importa? È stato pensionato da quel re di 1,000 scudi annui e fatto Cavaliero del su’ordine, oltre la paga del suo Padrone.’ Juvarra reportedly visited London again: he embarked from Lisbon for London in November 1720, according to Lorenzo Rovere, Vittorio Viale and Albert Brinckmann: Filippo Juvarra (Milan, 1937), 70. For Juvarra’s relationship with Burlington from 1715 to 1730, see ‘A Sketchbook of Filippo Juvarra at Chatsworth’, in Rudolf Wittkower: Studies in the Italian Baroque (London, 1975), 187–210.
1891–6–27–1(53), reproduced in Croft-Murray: John Devoto, Plate 4
designed for Medo (Parma, 1728) and engraved by Jacopo Vezzani, then by Martin Engelbrecht, in Theatralische Veränderungen, vergestellt in einer zu Mayland gehaltenen Oper (Augsburg, [1735]); see Franco Mancini and others: Illusione e pratica teatrale, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Cataloghi di Mostre, 37 (Vicenza, 1975), 102–8 and Plates 56 and 59
1891–6-27–1(29). No. 35 in the volume is also a copy of Righini; both the original and Devoto’s copy are reproduced in Croft-Murray: John Devoto, Plates 9 and 10
reproduced ibid, Plate 12, and in Dean: Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios, facing p. 571
Norwich Gazette (22 Nov 1729), cited in Deutsch, p. 247
see Deutsch, pp. 260, 267, 281–2, 303
1891–6-27–1(31–3)
1891–6-27–1(20); the meaning of the inscription (‘are Bol. Fabr.’?) is unknown
1891–6-27–1(28)
1891–6-27–3; reproduced in black and white in Croft-Murray: John Devoto, Plate 5; Highfill and others, iv, 352; and the Enciclopedia dello spettacolo (Rome, 1954–62), iv, Plate 67
1891–6-27–1(19)
1891–6-27–1(30), dated 1729/30
see the libretto, Ezio (Venice, 1728), 6: ‘Le Scene sono Invenzioni e direzioni delli Signori Gioseppe e Domenico Fratelli Valeriani, Ingegnieri del Teatro e Pittori di S.A.S. Elettorale di Baviera’
letter of 24 Oct 1727, summarized in Elizabeth Gibson: ‘Owen Swiney and the Italian Opera in London’, MT, cxxv (1984), 85, and cited in Gibson: The Royal Academy of Music (1719–28): the Institution and its Directors (diss., U. of London, 1985), ii, 87–9
British Museum, Prints and Drawings, 1962–12-8–7 reproduced (in black and white) in Rosenfeld, p. 71, and Highfill and others, iv, 353
Croft-Murray: John Devoto, pp. 10–11
Harvard University Theatre Collection, pf MS. Thr. 200. It may, however, be one of the copies ‘bespoke by the Nobility’ of Devoto’s drawing of Merlin’s Cave, designed for the 1735–6 production of King Arthur at Goodman’s Fields Theatre; see A. H. Scouten: The London Stage, 1660–1800, III: 1729–47 (Carbondale, 1961), i, 537, 547
Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond (Oxford, 1965), i, 177–80 (issue no. 42, 18 April 1711)
This is the description of Orlando given in the anonymous operatic diary in GBLbm Add. 11258, f.31v, s.v. 3 Feb 1733; printed in Konrad Sasse: ‘Opera Register from 1712 to 1734 (Colman-Register)’, HJb 1959, 221.
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Lindgren, L. (1987). The Staging of Handel’s Operas in London. In: Sadie, S., Hicks, A. (eds) Handel. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09139-3_6
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