A performance of Arnold's The Dancing Master at Guildhall School in 2015
Credit: Guildhall School
Bitter rows about the pernicious influence of Europe on British culture date back centuries — even in the genteel world of opera.
So much so that Italian singers were considered ‘unmanly’ by some British critics for their falsetto singing style, while others resented the amounts paid to foreign singing stars.
Which is why it might just be the perfect time for a new project to revive forgotten English operas that fell out of fashion during the 18th Century in the face of hit productions of the German, Italian and French classics.
Indeed John Andrews, the conductor behind the project, thinks the move may even chime with the current attitude among many towards Europe after Brexit.
“There was a really serious moral panic about opera in the 18th century, with English writers seeing it as threatening the manly national character. There was a fear that Catholic musicians speaking Italian and singing in an effeminate way were up to no good,” he said
“One of those fears was that singers would take their money back home and invest it in their Tuscan villas rather than spending their fees here, thus damaging Britain’s balance of trade. It has echoes of the Brexit debate.”
John Andrews is planning to revive forgotten English operas
Credit: Eddie Mulholland/The Telegraph
Although Mr Andrews, who is Principal Guest Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra and Conductor-in-Association with the English Symphony Orchestra, had the project in mind long before Britain’s departure from the European Union, he says the time is right to re-examine our own operatic traditions.
“There has long been the idea that opera is an imported art form, full of ‘funny continental stuff’, but there have always been English operas and what we could see now is a revival of our own traditions,” he said. “There’s never been a better time to rediscover composers who have been passed by in favour of more popular French, Italian and German ones.”
He has now launched a new opera company to champion unknown and neglected works from the 18th to the 20th Century, with operas by composers such as Thomas Arne, Arthur Sullivan, Malcolm Arnold and John Joubert.
The repertoire will also include previously overlooked female composers, such as Elizabeth Lutyens and Ethel Smyth.
The project has been faced with some very contemporary problems however, such as accessing music and librettos held in libraries forced to shut because of the Covid pandemic. Lockdown has also forced him to postpone a recording of Arthur Sulllivan’s 1864 ballet ‘L’île Enchantée’ and his oratorio ’The Martyr of Antioch’.
Mr Andrews has named his opera company Red Squirrel, symbolising “something endangered, digging up long-buried morsels”.
He aims to co-produce one staged project and one recording each year, with the company’s first project set to be a co-production, with Buxton International Festival, of Malcolm Arnold’s comic opera The Dancing Master, this summer.
The aim is to tap into what he describes as the “irreverent” tradition of English opera.
“The operas I’m unearthing tell us more about the world they came out of since they were more rooted in their day than those ever-popular ‘classics’ which somehow transcend their age,” he said. “You get in the 18th century English operas a sense of an English playfulness and irreverence that you don’t see in, say, Handel.
“They are almost part of the satirical, mocking cartoons of the age. Henry Carey’s Dragon of Wantley, for example, involves the drunken hero Moore killing the Dragon with a ‘kick up the back side’.”
Carey’s 1737 burlesque opera, which included criticism of Prime Minister Robert Walpole and his taxation policies, was a runaway success at the time, rivalling even The Beggar’s Opera, but has since been almost entirely forgotten.
“In the case of the 18th century everything was assumed to be ephemeral at that time and hardly anything was performed beyond the life of the composer,” said Mr Andrews, adding that English opera writers also suffered from what would now be called ‘cultural cringe’ among London’s sophisticated audiences in favour of their Continental rivals — something he hopes Red Squirrel will change.
“There was a sense in which we were proud about having the financial wherewithal and cultural discernment to be able to invite the best composers and performers from across the world, and then behind that was the idea that just as the best wine comes from France and the best silks from the Far East, the best *serious* opera comes from Paris, Italy and Germany,” he said.
Now Mr Andrews is hoping his rediscovery of forgotten operas will inspire new writers and composers to produce new English pieces.
“I hope they will realise there’s more to opera than just Handel and Strauss,” he said.
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