Gentlemen and Spectators : Studies in Journals, Opera and the Social Scene in Late Stuart London

Gentlemen preferred Italian, as several instances of the operatic development during the reign of Queen Anne indicate. The aristocracy of placeholders yearned for the same kind of fare as was in vogue with fellowaristocrats all over Europe: high-class Italian opera. There were indeed other Englishmen who resented such luxury imports. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, two innovative journalists among them, disguised themselves as anonymous spectators of the stage of the world and gave voice to the patriotic feelings that demanded rational and English entertainments. In the present studies the critical and musical activities of the editors of the Spectator are contrasted: on the one hand, to the gallant pursuits of a fellow-Augustan, Peter Motteux, librettist and once editor of the Gentleman's Journal, and, on the other hand, with a tradition of critical attitudes to singing on stage, which was well formed by the early years of the eighteenth century. Why then did Italian opera succeed at all? Henrik Knif attempts to outline ways in which the English élite encouraged Italian opera as a suitable answer to its urge to express a cultural as well as a social distinctiveness. The clash between the manners and ideologies of a courtly cosmopolitanism and the opinions of those who held to a more civic, and patriotic, persuasion forms a recurrent theme in this collection of studies.