Italian opera in late eighteenth-century London /

Three distinguished scholars of 18th-century English music and theater introduce much new documentary evidence in this exposition of a short but turbulent period in Italian opera production in London. This first of the two volumes starts with Sheridan's and Harris's purchase of the King's Theatre and its company in 1778 and ends in 1791, when the consequences of the 1789 fire that destroyed the theater had played out. Chapters 1-3 focus on the practical matters of theatrical production, from financial affairs to day-to-day management and production details. Chapters 4-7 cover each season's operas and ballets, with musical discussion that is predominately documentary rather than analytical. The final three chapters describe the complicated series of plans and activities that resulted from the loss of the theater building. Other tangential discussions can be found by way of the index, which is barely adequate. This authoritative book far surpasses Frederick Petty's Italian Opera in London, 1760-1800 (Ch, Dec'80) and Daniel Nalbach's The King's Theatre, 1704-1867 (1972) in depth of coverage and will be essential to a limited readership in the fields of English music and theater. Graduate students, researchers. J. Girdham; Saginaw Valley State University