ALGAROTTI (Francesco):

An Essay on the Opera Written in Italian by Count Algarotti.

London, Printed for L. Davis and C. Reymers..., 1767. FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. vi [vii Contents, viii blank], 192; lacks half-title. BOUND WITH: CAMPBELL (Thomas): An Essay on English Poetry. Boston: Published by Wells and Lilly, 1819. 12mo (in 6s), pp. 231 [232 blank, 233 - 234 adverts], engraved portrait of Campbell as frontispiece. 2 volumes in 1, bound in 19th century half calf, marbled boards, rebacked with old spine gilt in compartments (but worn and rubbed) laid down, newspaper clippings on end-papers and motto pasted above imprint on Campbell's book. A rather strange combination of two disparate works. Algarotti (1712 - 1764) wrote te most significant treatise on opera published in Europe in the 18th century. It was published in 1755 in Italy, Saggio sopra l'opera in musica. New Grove says of it that it was the "best-grounded and most wide-ranging of [18th century] critiques, also the one that received the widest diffusion through reprinting and translation. It proposed that all parts of music, including singing, be subordinated to a unifying poetic idea...."

John Price Antiquarian BooksProfessional seller

Book number: 4368

Catalogue: Opera

Keywords: opera music prose

CLAYTON (Ellen Creathorne):

Queens of Song: Being Memoirs of some of the most Celebrated Female Vocalists who have appeared on the lyric stage, from the earliest days of opera to the present time. To which is added A Chronological List of all the Operas that have been performed in Europe.

London: Smith, Elder and Co...., 1863. FIRST EDITION. 2 volumes. Large 8vo (222 x 148 mms.), pp. xvi, 379 [380 printer's imprint]; [iv], 452, engraved portraits of Elizabeth Billington as frontispiece to volume 1, contemporary half cream vellum, marbled boards,black and red morocco labels; lacking the other five portraits called for on the title-pages, which appear never to have been bound in, but an attractive set. Clayton (1834 - 1900) published her first book Notable Women in 1859, a rather hagiographic work, but this collection of lives of notable female singers is more straightforward, if often a little skimpy on biographical details. It was favourably reviewed and was her most successful until the publication of English Female Artists in 1876.

John Price Antiquarian BooksProfessional seller

Book number: 8167

Catalogue: Opera

Keywords: opera music prose

[DELLA LENA (Innocenzo):

Dissertazione Ragionata sul Teatro Moderno.

In Venezia, Presso Giacomo Storti..., 1791. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 8vo, 202 x 134 mms.,pp. [2] 3 - 111 [112 blank], B1 and leaves G1 - 4 unopened and G1 attached to a stub, contemporary paper binding, with brown covers and blue paper on spine, orange label; some general wear and tear and soiling to binding, but otherwise a very good copy Despite the obviously Italian name, Innocenzo Della Lena (1741 - 1813) seems to have died in England in 1814, as his will is found in The National Archives, "Will of Innocenzo Della Lena otherwise Innocent Dela Lena, Doctor of Physic of Saint Ann Westminster , Middlesex Date:12 December 1814." He also published in London A Dissertation on the Extraordinary Attributes and Inherent Virtues of Fixed Phlogistic Earth, with one description of it in Copac as "Quackery." A note in a recent hand attributes some information to OCLC: "This book is important for its full information relating to the….greatest Italian opera singers of the late 18th century - Luiza Todi (1753 -1833) and Luigi Marchiesi (1755 - 1829)." In an online paper, the Yale scholar Jessica Gabriel Peritz observes, "Several opera critics in early 1790s Venice wrote that the mezzosoprano Luigia Todi expressed her 'sensibility of soul' through her 'vocal defects' (Gazzetta urbana veneta, 1790). These writers described how she used the idiosyncrasies of her vocal organ—namely, her inability to maintain a uniform timbre throughout her range—to convey the violence of passion, in such a way that she exalted her listeners to the sublime (Innocenzo Della Lena, Dissertazione ragionata sul teatro moderno, 1791). Drawing attention to a singer's physiological weakness as a source of expressivity marked a significant departure from a Classical paradigm of order and balance. As evidenced by Settecento vocal treatises, ease of production and seamless registration were typically of paramount importance in bel canto aesthetics. Even the well-known 'castrato of sensibility' Giuseppe Millico, famous for having starred in Gluck's Orfeo in Parma in 1769, wrote that only voices without 'disgusting defects' could convey emotion through music (preface to La pietà d'amore, 1782). Nevertheless Todi, associated with roles such as Didone and Cleopatra, was celebrated for her unique mode of vocal expression. Some deemed her operatic performances the 'moral cause' of Venetians' sentimental education, believing that she had transformed her auditors into better citizens with the power of her voice (Della Lena, 1791)." OCLC locates two copies of this item in Italy: Biblioteca della Fondazione Biblioteca San Bernardino and Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. OCLC also adds Newberry, Dartmouth, and Pennsylvania in the United States; and and Tübigen in Germany; and adds, "This book is important for its full information relating to the two greatest Italian opera singers of the late 18th century--La Todi and Luigi Marchesi." I have been unable to access some scholarly articles, namely, Thomas Bauman, "The Society of La Fenice and Its First Impresarios" (Journal of the American Musicological Society Vol. 39, No. 2 (Summer, 1986), pp. 332-354). See also Martha Feldman's book, Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in n Eighteenth-Century Italy (2010).

John Price Antiquarian BooksProfessional seller

Book number: 9555

Catalogue: Opera

Keywords: opera singers prose

EBERS (John):

Seven Years of the King's Theatre.

London: William Harrison Ainsworth..., 1828. FIRST EDITION. Large 8vo, 220 x 136 mms. pp. [ v], vi - xxviii, 395 [396 printer's imprint], engraved portrait of Pasta as Desdemona, 5 other engraved plates of opera singers, recently rebound in half calf, marbled boards, red morocco label; a very good copy. In his short life, John Ebers (1785 - 1830) worked first as a bookseller, but in 1820, he and William Ayrton took overt the management of the King's Theatre, Haymarket. Ayrton left after a year, and Ebers took a four-year lease on the theatre in 1822. He was responsible for introducing several new Rossini operas to London audiences. Unfortunately, his theatrical and artistic skills were not complemented by business acumen, and he was made bankrupt in 1827; he then returned to the more dubious safety of bookselling. His book, however, is vivid and entertaining, full of information and insight into the perils and pleasures of managing an opera house. The Monthly Review for 1828 reviewed it at great length, beginning, "THIS book may be looked upon as the confession of a tradesman, who, having amassed a little fortune in the pleasant and respectable business of a bookseller, suffered his head to be turned by a taste for Italian music, and by an ambition to figure as the manager of the Opera. Mr. Ebers might have remained snug enough, all his life, in his shop at Bond Street, if he had been content with his original vocation; but choosing to ascend from being the mere vender of box and pit tickets for the King's Theatre, to the superintendence of the whole concern, he has completely sacrificed to his folly, the acquisitions of a life of honest industry, and in consequence has been obliged to seek the usual and pitiable refuge of the Gazette. The imprudence with which a man of staid and thrifty habits, like our author, suffered himself, after his first year's woeful experience, to be tempted onward in a career of ruin from season to season, is one of the most remarkable features of his volume. It would seem, indeed, that he depended in some measure upon the promises of a few noblemen, to give him effectual assistance-promises which, we need hardly say, never went beyond vague general expressions, and were uttered only to be broken. Perhaps also he conceived, that personal access to a few peers, and a familiar acquaintance with the stars of the musical and dancing world, conferred upon him a degree of importance, which was equitably purchased by pecuniary losses, however serious and embarrassing they might be. To this unhappy vanity we must add the influence of a fatal feeling, similar to that which actuates the losing gambler, when he lays down stake after stake, under the feverish hope that some brilliant gleam of good fortune might at length compensate him for his reverses. It is however but justice to Mr. Ebers to add, that whatever may have been the motives of his connexion with the Opera, he has sustained his disappointments with a degree of manliness and good temper, we might add, with a philosophical dignity, which cannot fail to awaken the public sympathy in his favour. He endeavours to make out no case for compassion; he conceals nothing that can tend to throw light on the history of the theatre during his management; and he discloses every thing fairly, without measuring the extent to which it may tell for or against himself."

John Price Antiquarian BooksProfessional seller

Book number: 10358

Catalogue: Opera

Keywords: opera theatre prose

GAY (John). BARNETT (John):

The Beggar's Opera Arranged from a very Scarce Edition, the objectionable poetry altered and adapted to the Eye of the Most Fastidious, with New Symphonies and Accompaniments for the Paian Forte. By John Barnett, Composer to the Theatres Royal. National Library of Standard Music.

London Printed & Published by Mahew, Isaac, & Co at the Office of the National Library of Standard Works, [no date] [1835] Folio, 347 x 248 mms., pp. 104, engraved throughout, later 20th century binding in half blue binder's cloth, marbled boards, title in gilt on spine and front cover; title-page soiled at edges and missing small portion of lower corner, last leaf slightly defective with upper corner cut (no loss of text), some other general wear, but an acceptable copy. The composer John Barnett (1802–1890) does not disclose the "very Scarce Edition" he used as copy-text, and I cannot tell exactly how he has carried out the sort of alterations that Dr. Bowdler would not doubt approved of. Barnett, however, took a serious interest in the light music popular in London theatres in the 1830s, as well as in singing techniques, as evidenced by his book, Elements of Singing (1829). Friedrich von Raumer, in his England in 1835: Being a Series of Letters written to Friends in Germany reports seeing a performance of The Beggar's Opera at the Haymarket in 1835, but it is not clear if this was Barnett's edition. Uncommon. Copies located in BL, Bodleian, Illinois Wesleyan University; and, curiously, Danish National Library and the Royal Library in Denmark.

John Price Antiquarian BooksProfessional seller

Book number: 8280

Catalogue: Opera

Keywords: opera theatre