Between Opera and Musical
Music occupied an important but uneasy position in early nineteenth-century London theatre. It appeared at all types of theatres, but was constrained by repertoire laws, theatrical conventions, and long-held concerns about the suitability of music for the British character. London theatre composers therefore created works that followed a different aesthetic from Continental opera, one often more congruent with musical theatre. An examination of three works by Henry Bishop for Covent Garden—the melodrama The Miller and his Men, the opera The Slave, and an adaptation of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro—demonstrates how British composers positioned music within a culture both fascinated and repelled by it. In the process, important parallels with the use of music in popular theatre are revealed.