Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Opera librettos and British politics

2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 42; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/em/cau034

1741-7260

Berta Joncus,

Historical Influence and Diplomacy

In an era when meanings were often doubled to avoid censorship, stage works typically said more than posterity might think they were saying. Unravelling meanings that were—and were not—present in London’s 18th-century operas is the task Thomas McGeary sets himself, with questionable results. The book’s title is something of a misnomer, McGeary’s actual study being of Italian opera librettos as they might relate to British Opposition politics of the early 18th century. McGeary proceeds via a series of thematic articles based on largely familiar material, including his own earlier publications. The focus tends to be on minor incidents, which deprives the reader of the synoptic view of London’s Italian operas promised by the title. McGeary is most persuasive when explaining how Opposition writers hid criticism of government behind criticism of opera. He unpicks knotted subtexts according to methods outlined in The art of railing (1723), identifying when writers used the ‘allegorical Mode’, the ‘mock Panegyric’, ‘Parallels’ and ‘Lying’ (pp.98–9). He shows how these satirical tools were deployed in publications ranging from a mock 1735 playbill to John Gay’s Beggar’s opera and Italian librettos. Criticism of First Minister Robert Walpole’s dealings with Spain—over trade routes in the West Indies, Spain’s claim to Gibraltar, and Spain’s seizure of British merchant vessels—crystallize as the true subject of much Opposition commentary ostensibly about opera productions. Enriched through detail, McGeary’s accounts remind us what his earlier forays into this topic have shown: the ingenuity with which popular prejudices were manipulated to impugn ministerial action under pretext of discussing theatrical presentation. General readers unfamiliar with the standard sources on which McGeary draws will learn that reports of rivalries between prime donne Cuzzoni and Faustina and their factions were actually about clashes between England and Spain; how the collapse of the Royal Academy echoed that of Spanish–English negotiations at the 1728 Congress of Soissons; and in what way 1733 criticism of Handel’s dismissal of Senesino alluded to King George II’s dismissal of the Earl of Chesterfield for joining the Opposition. McGeary summarizes his earlier scholarship on Farinelli, who quitted London for Spain while still contracted to the Opera of the Nobility, a departure which Opposition writers made stand for a host of assertions—about the folly of Town fashion, Spain’s theft of British ships and the costa guardas’ torture of British seamen—which all fuelled support for the 1739 ‘War of Jenkins’ Ear’.