Dido, Queen of Carthage (opera)
Dido, Queen of Carthage was an
. The opera was not a success and was never revived after its original run of performances. The score has been lost.Background and performance history
Dido, Queen of Carthage, was Storace's first
Operas set to Metastasio's Didone abbandonata were not new to the London stage. Previous productions had included:
The lead singers of Storace's opera were well known to London audiences. The celebrated German
Dido, Queen of Carthage opened on 23 May 1792 at The King's Theatre and was scheduled to run for five performances, one of which (28 May) was a benefit performance for Storace.
Mr. Prince Hoare was employed upon the Didone Abbandonata of Metastasio; and fitted its music, I fear, not with syllable, but English words, distributed into recitative and air; and Dido, with immense splendour of scenery, dresses, and decorations, was brought out on the 23rd of May. Madame Mara was your Dido, Kelly Iarbas, and the pious Eneas Mrs Crouch herself! There was, for garnish, a masque, in which Bannister was the Neptune, Miss Collins Venus, and the three Graces, Misses Decamp, Jacobs, and Heard. And yet, all this, with the aid of Sedgewick, and Dignum, and Master Welsh, with supernumeraries out of number, lived only three or four nights, and then vanished like a dream. But the power of Metastasio must not suffer from the harshness of another language, and the taste of a people requiring bolder situations in the drama and a crowd of incidents arranged with little artifice, and ambitious of only striking effects.[6]
No copies of Storace's score exist. It was never published and the original was lost (possibly in the fire that destroyed the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1809).
Roles
- Dido – created by Gertrud Elisabeth Mara[7]
- Aeneas – created by Anna Maria Crouch
- Iarbas – created by Michael Kelly
- Abdalla – created by Charles Dignum
- Almidah – created by Thomas Sedgwick
- Anna – created by Caroline Barclay
- Trojan soldiers, Getulian and Numidian troops, Trojan and Carthaginian attendants
Synopsis
Main opera: Dido, Queen of Carthage
- Setting: Ancient Carthage
Dido, Queen of Carthage, is promised in marriage to Iarbas, King of
Masque: Neptune's Prophecy
- Setting: A temple to Neptune
In the patriotic masque which followed the opera performance, Neptune, the god of the sea, appears along with Venus, Ascanius, and the Three Graces to praise the glory of Great Britain as a "god-like race" and to predict that the nation will eclipse both Tyre and Carthage in naval fame.[9]
Notes and references
- ^ Girdham
- ^ See Hoare, Prince, Dido, Queen of Carthage: an opera (1792)
- ^ Edgcumbe (1827) p. 80
- ^ Benefit performances, where one of the opera's singers or its composer received the box-office takings for a particular performance in addition to their salary, were a common practice in the 18th and 19th century opera world. For more, see Price et al. (1995) Chapter 3, Part II, "Recruitment and Salaries".
- ^ quoted in Burden (2008)
- ^ Boaden (1825) pp. 294–5.
- ^ Premiere cast from Burden (2008)
- ^ The synopsis is based on the account in Walker's Hibernian Magazine (1792) p. 55
- ^ Description based on Walker's Hibernian Magazine (1792) p. 55 and Bono and Tessitore (1997) p. 65
Sources
- Boaden, James, Memoirs of the Life of John P. Kemble, R.H. Small, 1825
- Bono, Paola and Tessitore, Maria Vittoria, "Didone en travesti: un'eroina tragica in commedia" in Viola Papetti (ed.), Le forme del teatro, Volume 8, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1997. ISBN 88-87114-04-8
- Burden, Michael, Metastasio on the British Stage 1728–1840, a catalogue, Oxford University Research Archive, 2008 (accessed 6 December 2009)
- Edgcumbe, Richard, Musical Reminiscences of an Old Amateur, W. Clarke, 1827
- Girdham, Jane (2001). "Storace, Stephen (John Seymour)". In ISBN 978-1-56159-239-5.
- Marshall, Julian (2001). "Mara, Gertrud Elisabeth". In ISBN 978-1-56159-239-5.
- Nicoll, Allardyce, A History of English Drama 1660-1900, Volume 3, Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN 0-521-10930-2
- Price, Curtis Alexander et al., Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-century London: The King's Theatre, Haymarket, 1778-1791, Oxford University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-19-816166-2
- The Gentleman's Magazine, Obituary: Prince Hoare, Esq. F.S.A., Volume 158, June 1835, p. 662
- Walker's Hibernian Magazine, "Account of a new serious opera, called Dido Q. of Carthage" Part 2, 1792