Excerpt from The Modern British Drama, Vol. 5 of 5: Operas and Farces

In ridicule of the then prevailing taste for the Italian stage, Gay com posed his celebrated Beggars' Opera; but the author, while it was only his intention to satirize what he deemed stiff and unnatural in the Opera, pre sented the public with a new 'and popular species of Drama, happily adapted to the taste of the nation. This was the more remarkable, as the same thing had happened to the Shepherd's Wake of the same author, which, although intended as a parody upon Philips' Pastorals, owed its popularity to its being read as a serious production. The amazing success of the Beggars' Opera is well known. Much was no doubt to be ascribed to the strokes of personal and political satire which it contained, and much to the humour of the dialogue. But still its popularity chiefly rested upon the combination of action and music in a manner to which the English audience had been hitherto strangers; and which, while a lively comic dialogue supplied the protracted languors ofthe recitative, gave them a succession of songs adapted to character, and set to the most popular national airs. Accordingly, since that period, the English Opera has been a favourite variety of our Drama. No critic has everdeigned to lay down rules for its government; and, per haps, like a disregarded colony, it has not thriven the worse for its exemption from authority and restriction. The form, indeed, of this amusement, must be given up as unnatural and artificial; for who in real life express their feelings in music? In the Italian Opera this absurdity is shaded by our being transferred, as it were, into a country of music, where all the action and dialogue is adapted to that art; and where the recitative, in which the calmer scenes are performed, serves gradually to introduce and apologize for the airs, which in the English Opera are bluntly inserted into a plain prose dialogue Yet this anomalous species of dramatic composition is not without lts general principles of regulation. The tone of the English Opera is either comic, or, at least, turns upon the embarrassments of love, which claim a prescriptive title to vent themselves in song. The heroic character of the Italian Opera would appear absurd upon an English stage, although our ear is reconciled to it in the Haymarket, partly by habit, and partly by the disguzse of a foreign language. The Opera Buffa we have copied with some success in the after-pieces of The Golden Pippin and Midas; but these are rather parodies of the Italian, than a distinct species of composition. To succeed in the English Opera, or at least to attain excellence, the author ought to possess musical knowledge, as well as power of dramatic writing; and so seldom has this union occurred, that most of our stock-operas are written by one author, Isaac Love in a Village, and the Padlock, are monuments of his genius in this species of composition. The Duenna is an instance of the versatility of Mr. Sheridan's wit and genius, which can either flash through a comedy, or sparkle'in a song, at the pleasure of their owner. Rosina is a pleasing instance of the Pasroral Opera, but owes its chief popularity to the beauty of the melodies. The English Opera seems now in its wane before a still more unregulated anomaly, the modern M elo Drama, in which all that can mingle, may.

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