Johann Peter Salomon, the celebrated violinist and impresario, made his debut in England in March 1781. History has credited Salomon with bringing Haydn to London, yet as Ian Woodfield reveals in this
An outstandingly significant feat of Mozart scholarship.... A fundamental reassessment of the early history of CosAa fan tutte and a major contribution to its critical evaluation as a work of art.
Music of the Raj provides a colourful portrait of daily musical life in the late eighteenth century. Based on unpublished Anglo-Indian correspondence, Woodfield illustrates in fascinating detail the m
In the year following its 1787 Prague premi?re, Don Giovanni was performed in Vienna. Everyone, according to the well-known account by Da Ponte, thought something was wrong with it. In response, Moza
When Joseph II placed his opera buffa troupe in competition with the re-formed Singspiel, he provoked an intense struggle between supporters of the rival national genres, who organized claques to chee
In this study, Ian Woodfield explores the cultural and commercial life of Italian opera in late eighteenth-century London. It was a period when theatre and opera worlds mixed, venues were shared, and agents and managers collaborated and competed. Through primary sources, many analysed for the first time, Woodfield examines such issues as finances, recruitment policy, the handling of singers and composers, links with Paris and Italy, and the role of women in opera management. These key topics are also placed within the context of a personal dispute between two of the most important managers of the day, the woman writer Frances Brooke and the actor David Garrick, which influenced the running of the major venues, the King's Theatre, Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Woodfield has also uncovered new information concerning the influential role of the eighteenth-century music historian and critic Charles Burney, as artistic advisor to the King's Theatre.
The Italian opera company in Prague managed by Pasquale Bondini and Domenico Guardasoni played a central role in promoting Mozart's operas during the final years of his life. Using a wide range of primary sources which include the superb collections of eighteenth-century opera posters and concert programmes in Leipzig and the Indice de' teatrali spettacoli, an almanac of Italian singers and dancers, this study examines the annual schedules, recruitment networks, casting policies and repertoire selections of this important company. Ian Woodfield shows how Italian-language performances of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte and La clemenza di Tito flourished along the well-known cultural axis linking Prague in Bohemia to Dresden and Leipzig in Saxony. The important part played by concert performances of operatic arias in the early reception of Mozart's works is also discussed and new information is presented about the reception of Josepha Duschek and Mozart in Leipzig.
