Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Wikipedia
The Siege of Rhodes is an opera written to a text by the impresario William Davenant, with a score by five composers, including Henry Lawes and Matthew Locke. [1] It is considered to be the first English opera.
Part 1 of The Siege of Rhodes was first performed in a small private theatre constructed at Davenant's home Rutland House in 1656. Special permission had to be obtained from the Puritan government of Oliver Cromwell as dramatic performances were outlawed and all public theatres closed. Davenant managed to obtain permission by calling the production "recitative music", music being still permissible within the law. When it was published in 1656, it was under the equivocating title The siege of Rhodes made a representation by the art of prospective in scenes, and the story sung in recitative musick, at the back part of Rutland-House in the upper end of Aldersgate-Street, London. The 1659 reprinting gives the location at the Cock-pit in Drury Lane, a well-known theatre frequented by Samuel Pepys after the Restoration (1660). The Rutland House production also included England's first professional actress, Mrs. Coleman [2].
Part 2 of The Siege of Rhodes followed in the 1657–59 era, and was first published in 1663.[1]
The plot was based on the siege of Rhodes which occurred in 1522 when the island was besieged by the Ottoman fleet of Suleiman the Magnificent. The score of the opera is believed to be lost. However, the original sketches by John Webb for the stage sets, themselves an innovation of the day, are extant.
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[edit] References
- ^ Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1978; pp. 203-4.
Annotations
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Siege of Rhodes, The (1656), revised in (1661)
Opera-cum-heroic drama by Sir William D’Avenant, thought to have been written originally as a play, with music added later in order to circumvent the Commonwealth (see Interregnum) law against purely dramatic entertainment, and gain the Government’s permission to mount it at Rutland House. The performance helped pave the way for the re-opening of the theatres, and for D’Avenant’s own receipt of one of the monopoly patents as theatre manager. The action concerns the siege of Rhodes by Soleyman the Magnificent, and Duke Alphonso’s unreasonable jealousy of his wife, the virtuous Ianthe, who eventually saves her husband and the island. D’Avenant said he wrote it partly to illustrate `the Characters of Vertue in the shapes of Valor and Conjugal Love’. The staging as with the earlier court masque was accompanied by lavish spectacle.
Dictionary of English Literature, Marion Wynne-Davies, Bloomsbury,1997 http://www.bloomsbury.com/ARC/detail.asp?EntryID=109249&bid=9 -
D’Avenant, William, Sir, 1606-1668.
The siege of Rhodes: the first and second part; as they were lately represented at His Highness the Duke of York’s Theatre in Lincolns-Inn Fields. The first part being lately enlarg’d. Written by Sir VVilliam D’Avenant.
London : printed for Henry Herringman, and are to be sold at his shop, at the sign of the Anchor, on the lower-walk in the New-Exchange, 1663.
4⁰. First edition of the ‘second’ part; there were two editions, and a further re-issue, all with the same imprint. Part I appeared in 1656, rpr. 1659.Read by Pepys on Sept 23rd. 1664, however Pepys does not appear to have retained his separate copy of the Siege. The work was included in, and the separate edition presumably replaced by, his copy of Davenant’s ‘Works’ London: 1673 - PL 2347.