Italian Opera and Arson in Late Eighteenth-Century London

1989 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Curtis Price
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
New Information ◽  
Opera Seria ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Opera House ◽  
To Come ◽  
Opera Houses

After the burning of the Haymarket theater in 1789, the Italian opera in London was in chaos. Yet several critics called this a golden age for opera seria, and London continued to attract the greatest singers and dancers. A recently discovered archive-which includes the complete financial and managerial records of two London opera houses-adds considerably to our understanding of this period and provides new information about Haydn, Burney, Sheridan, Turner, the Storaces, and Mozart. The documents also show that the Prince of Wales, the Marquis of Salisbury, and the Duke of Bedford patronized and secretly financed a court opera house at the Pantheon during 1790-92, with Paisiello as house composer in absentia. But faced with crushing competition from Haydn at the new Haymarket theater, Bedford and Salisbury conspired to have the Pantheon burned down, an act which affected the management of Italian opera in London for decades to come.

The Practical and Symbolic Functions of Pre-Rameau Opera at the Paris Opéra before Gluck

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-50
Author(s):  
Michel Noiray
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Paris Opera ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Press ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter explains how a uniquely long-lived canon evolved in revivals of operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully and his immediate successors—chiefly André Campra and André-Cardinal Destouches—right up to the early 1770s. The Académie Royale de Musique was unique as the only theater to resist Italian repertory, except in two brief controversial periods. A dogmatic commitment to the old style and repertory survived after Lully’s death, quite separate from the operas of Jean-Philippe Rameau. Opposition to this unique practice broke out occasionally among the public, but such opinion was not widely supported in the press. It is striking that the main critics of ancienne musique, as it was called—Rousseau, Paul Henri d’Holbach, and Friedrich Melchior von Grimm—all came from outside France. This chapter is paired with Franco Piperno’s “Italian opera and the concept of ‘canon’ in the late eighteenth century.”

Italian Opera and the Concept of “Canon” in the Late Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 50-71
Author(s):  
Franco Piperno
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Paris Opera ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Giovanni Paisiello

This essay shows that in Italy for much of the eighteenth century, canonic recognition was granted to the librettist of a famous opera but not to the composer, who was seen as an artisan rather than an intellectual. But the unique long-term popularity of Pergolesi’s La serva padrona (1733) led to the honoring of composers in subsequent generations both in musical and in dramatic terms. Even though a stable authorial canon of opera composers failed to establish itself in Italy prior to the triumph of Rossini, strong respect emerged for composers such as Niccolò Jommelli, Niccolò Piccinni, and Giovanni Paisiello, which, together with the rising fame of leading singers, laid the groundwork for the Italian operatic canon of the nineteenth century. This chapter is paired with Michel Noiray’s “The practical and symbolic functions of pre-Rameau opera at the Paris Opéra before Gluck.”

The Leaders of the German Steam-Engine Industry During the First Hundred Years

1944 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fritz Redlich
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Steam Engine ◽  
Iron Industry ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Industrial Leadership ◽  
Engine Industry ◽  
State Administrators ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
To Come

The introduction of steam engines in Germany was the work of Prussian state administrators, a body of men who were technically trained, educated in Mercantilist traditions, and guided by the principles of Mercantilist policy. That fact was typical of the German political and economic setup in the late eighteenth century; Prussian administrators also introduced the modern iron industry into Germany. By contrast. English industrial leadership in the same years was already in the hands of co-operating inventors and entrepreneurs, as evidenced by the classical partnership of Watt and Boulton, the prototype of many to come in capitalistic industry.

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