William Shield.(Review)

Rosina: A Comic Opera (1782). Libretto by Frances Brooke. Edited by John Drummond. (Musica Britannica, 72.) London: Stainer and Bell, 1998. [Dramatis personae, p. xiv; pref. in Eng., Fr., Ger., p. xvii-xix; introd., p. xxi-xxvii; sources, p. xxviii-xxxi; editorial policy, p. xxxii; notes on performance, p. xxxiii-xxxiv; select bibliog., p. xxxv. ISMN M-2202-1901-6; ISBN 0-85249-844-6. [pound]65.]

"Who cares," Eric Walter White once asked, only somewhat facetiously, "if there is English opera?" (The Rise of English Opera [New York: The Philosophical Library, 1951; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1972], 13). Not only was England dismissed by outsiders as the Land ohne Musik, but as early as 1681, John Playford lamented "the Vanity of some of our English Gentry to admire that in a Foreigner, which they either slight, or take little notice of, in one of their own Nation" (book 3 of his Choice Ayres and Songs, 1681; quoted by Roger Fiske in English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Centuty [London: Oxford University Press, 1973; 2d ed. 1986], xv). This long-standing disregard has been challenge over the past half century (as witnessess by the series Musica Britannica, among other efforts), but recognition of the rich and active role of native composers of operas in English has been particularly slow to come. Certainly Henry Purcell's achievements have been long acknowledged, as has the commercial (if not artistic) success of The Beggar's Opera (1728). But from this point until the advent of Benjamin Britten, virtually all mention of English opera vanishes from the standard histories.

Why have English operas been overlooked for so long? There are undoubtedly many reasons beyond the snobbery regarding native efforts. The English class system certainly played a role, at least in the eighteenth century--Italian opera in England was performed exclusively in London, during a somewhat limited season, and was accessible only to the wealthy, while "English" opera was performed throughout the country and heard by a much wider range of society. Yet the resulting popularity of the English productions was a blow to their aesthetic prestige, since even to this day, "more elite" is still frequently equated with "more artistic." Economics also played a role; if Italian singers could command astronomical salaries, they must be better than the native-born singers performing in an English opera. Moreover, the music itself was different; by the last quarter of the eighteenth century, composers of English opera had almost entirely abandoned a sung-through operatic structure in favor of a model based on spoke n dialogue with songs, much in the manner of a Singspiel or even like the musical theater of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Additionally, Fiske estimates that borrowed music can be found in seventy-five percent of English opera productions after 1762, including "both fully-composed arias by known composers and simple traditional ballads by 'anon'" (p. 274). Such an amalgamation undermined English opera's reputation still further, since pasticcio productions have never garnered the scholarly attention devoted to works by single composers.

Perhaps one of the largest obstacles to the serious study (and performance) of eighteenth-century English opera has been the paucity of primary source materials-- the devastating fires suffered by both the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theaters in the early nineteenth century destroyed nearly all manuscript full scores and orchestral parts. Since virtually all eighteenth century operas in England were published only in vocal-score format, the historical loss of this manuscript music was disastrous. The survival, therefore, of a set of parts--albeit nineteenth-century copies-- from one of the great English successes of the eighteenth century is an invaluable aid to scholarship. These parts, coupled with a contemporary vocal score, form the basis of John Drummond's new edition of William Shield's Rosina.

Shield had truly come up through the ranks of the English musical world. He was born in 1748 and became an orphan at age nine when his father, a music master, died. Shield was apprenticed to a boat-builder, but he fled the profession as soon as legally possible and began music lessons with Charles Avison in Newcastle. Shield had already built a successful career as a violinist and composer in northeastern England when he was heard at Scarborough by Felice tie Giardini in 1772. Giardini encouraged Shield to come to London, and by 1773, Shield had joined the orchestra of the King's Theatre in the Haymarket as a violinist, soon becoming the principal violist--a seat he would hold for eighteen years. From this vantage point, Shield expanded his understanding of orchestration anti composition, particularly as he performed Italian works by Antonio Sacchini and Giovanni Paisiello. For his own first operatic efforts, however, Shield followed the English model, producing The Flitch of Bacon (1778), The Cobler of Cast lebury (1779), and The Siege of Gibraltar (1780). Although these works enjoyed varying degrees of success, they were held in enough regard to enable Shield's appointment as resident composer at Covent Garden in 1782. Debuting as an after piece at Covent Garden on 31 December 1782, Rosina was Shield's first opera after attaining this new position.

Rosina is a fine model of English opera in numerous respects. It was extremely successful--performed seventy times over the next two seasons, and 201 times by the end of the century. Its triumph firmly established Shield in his new post, a position which he held until quarreling with the theater's management in 1791. The opera itself was a beloved fixture of the English repertory for nearly a century, and the vocal score appeared in various editions as late as 1874. Rosina was exported to the New World, where it was performed in Jamaica even before it arrived in the United States. Although Rosina was Shield's most successful opera, his The Poor Soldier (1783) and The Farmer (1787) enjoyed runs almost as long, and, collectively, Shield's works maintained Covent Garden's preeminence in English opera until 1789, when at last Drury Lane regained operatic leadership with Stephen Storace's The Haunted Tower.

Rosina also reflects English opera's typical composite authorship. Shield is credited with the music of Rosina, but in actuality, he composed only the overture and ten of the opera's eighteen songs. He was responsible for selecting the other pieces, however, and, as would be the pattern in Shield's other operas, he drew from a diverse range of opera arias and folk songs. His borrowings were freely acknowledged in the 1783 vocal score issued by William Napier ("N" in Drummond's list of sources). Rosina begins with the catch "Care Thou Canker," attributed by William Chappell to John Garth of Durham (The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time: A History of the Ancient Songs. Ballads, and of the Dance Tunes of England, 2 vols. [London: Chappell, 1855-59; reprint, New York: Dover, 1965], 722; quoted by Fiske, 612), while No. 3 was "Published by Permission of Mr. Paxton," with the note "The above Air may be sung as a Glee for 3 Voices" (Napier vocal score, p. 10). The identity of Mr. Paxton is not p recisely known, for the brothers Stephen and William Paxton both contributed to A Collection of Glees, Catches &c. for Three and four Voices, published earlier in 1782 in London by Stephen Paxton, but Drummond ascribes Rosina's glee to Stephen. For No. 11 in the second act, Shield selected an aria from Antonio Sacchini's Rinaldo. Rosina's vocal score indicates that this aria was "Published by Permission of Mr. Bremner" (Napier vocal score, p. 26), who had published the vocal score of Rinaldo in 1780.