Search Results

Synge’s formative years as a writer (1893–1901) were spent abroad, but his earliest artistic impulses and training were expressed through music. The history of late Victorian and Edwardian music in Dublin can provide a much better explanation than has hitherto been available for Synge’s abandonment of music in favour of literature. Several features of music in Dublin at the turn of the century explain why it was that Synge’s ‘cry to God for a melody’ (1898) was answered in words rather than tones. These include the influence of Stanford on the composition of Irish art music, the appointment of Michele Esposito to the Royal Irish Academy of Music (where Synge was a student) in 1882, the uncertain fate of the Dublin Orchestral Society in Edwardian Dublin, and the reception of music in Dublin in Joyce’s ‘The Dead’, written in the same year as Synge’s Playboy of the Western World.

This chapter continues to draw upon the Chinnery Family Papers, especially the extensive correspondence between Viotti and members of the Chinnery family. Viotti's role as a founding member, director, and performer in the Philharmonic Society in London in 1813–16, and his involvement in an abortive attempt to form a rival association, including the establishment of a Royal Academy of Music, are considered at length. Due consideration is given to his continued participation in private concerts in the Chinnery home and elsewhere in London, his yearly visits to the Continent, usually to Paris, with Margaret Chinnery in the years 1814–18, his involvement in the wine business, his dealings with music publishers, and his pupils, including Philippe Libon, Nicolas Mori, and André Robberechts.

The chapter deals with the recruitment and training of military musicians in the context of wider aspects of recruitment and training for music professionals. It deals with boy musicians, their training and recruitment, and with concerns over the training of musicians in London more generally and the establishment of what was to become the Royal Military School of Music.

An enduring and ever-changing trope, Italian singing became a contentious subject in the opera discourse across Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century. While the dissemination of national ideas increasingly challenged the still ubiquitous presence of Italian singers, conservatories institutionalized Italian vocal pedagogy with the overt intent of cultivating “native” professionals. Yet the extent to which different singing aesthetics could be reconciled in the operatic practice of the time remained a major point of debate. This paper focuses on how discussions of the Italian voice in London intersected with and informed opinions about how the development of a lofty English operatic genre should be modeled upon the essentially lyrical nature of Italian opera. Through the examination of printed materials on vocal aesthetics and pedagogy, voice treatises published in London by singing teachers such as Gesualdo Lanza and Domenico Crivelli, and archival documents from the Royal Academy of Music, this essay traces how the idea of the Italian voice in London participated in a rather fluid discourse that acknowledged the permeability of national and foreign cultures rather than treating them as mutually exclusive.

This chapter describes George Frideric Handel's association with the Royal Academy of Music as Master of the orchestra. Under the perpetual governorship of the Lord Chamberlain, Handel's first order of business was to gather known opera singers from mainland Europe and encourage them to produce opera at the Academy. His perseverance bore fruit as he was able to get the castrato Senesino, the sopranos Durastante and Salvai, castrato Berselli, tenor Guicciardi, and the bass Boschi. The chapter then discusses Handel's first opera at the academy, Radamisto, which was to mark the reunion of the patronage base of King George I. Handel's life during the following years was controlled by the routine of the opera seasons, which started a rivalry with Giovanni Bononcini. One notable event during this period was Handel's naturalisation to British citizenship signed by the King in 1727.

This chapter explores musical compositions written by George Frideric Handel during his time at the Royal Academy of Music where he was Master of the Orchestra. It examines Handel's works in some detail, beginning with his early Academy operas as a general introduction. During the years 1723–25, Handel produced three major works that must be regarded as the masterpieces of his Academy years in terms of quality — Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano, and Rodelinda. For sheer musical and compositional power, Rodelinda might be preferred: one beautiful aria follows another in a consistently well-balanced succession of contrasts. Tamerlano, on the other hand, had a conventional final aria for one of the leading soloists preceded by a chain ensemble. For illustration of the wide range of Handel's techniques, however, the best example is Giulio Cesare, consisting of a fast-moving plot, full of incident and containing some of Handel's best arias.

This chapter examines George Frideric Handel's career as the general manager of The King's Theatre, where he made his first attempts at transition from writing Italian opera to English oratorio. Handel's first English oratorio, Esther, was performed in 1732 where he indicated in advertisements that there was to be a lack of stage action. This element, combined with the music of the opera stars and the grand anthem style used in the coronation anthems sung in English, created the recipe for his future theatre career. The chapter concludes by describing his rivalry with the Opera of the Nobility group and his programme at Covent Garden in 1737 which was a repertory of twelve works: eight operas and four oratorios. The programme proved to be the end for the Opera of the Nobility but was also dangerous as Handel's health gave way towards the end of the season.

In this chapter, Cate describes her life, thus far, through bullying and cruelty at school from many, including her brother, to her discovery that she could sing, her time at the Royal Academy of Music, her singing career, and, latterly, her time as a wife and mother. It was through singing that she first connected with emotional experience and it is when singing that she feels strongest and most alive.