Michael Arne was an English composer, harpsichordist, organist, singer, and actor. He was the son of the composer Thomas Arne and the soprano Cecilia Young, a member of the famous Young family of musicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Like his father, Arne worked primarily as a composer of stage music and vocal art song, contributing little to other genres of music. He wrote several songs for London's pleasure gardens, the most famous of which is Lass with the Delicate Air (1762). A moderately prolific composer, Arne wrote nine operas and collaborated on at least 15 others. His most successful opera, Cymon (1767), enjoyed several revivals during his lifetime and into the early nineteenth century.
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan was an Anglo-Irish playwright, writer and Whig politician who sat in the British House of Commons from 1780 to 1812, representing the constituencies of Stafford, Westminster and Ilchester. The owner of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London, he wrote several prominent plays such as The Rivals (1775), The Duenna (1775), The School for Scandal (1777) and A Trip to Scarborough (1777), along with serving as Treasurer of the Navy from 1806 to 1807. After dying in 1816, Sheridan was buried at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, and his plays remain a central part of the Western canon and are regularly performed around the world.
A chaperone in its original social usage was a person who for propriety's sake accompanied an unmarried girl in public; usually she was an older married woman, and most commonly the girl's own mother.
Comic opera, sometimes known as light opera, is a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending and often including spoken dialogue.
The Rivals is a comedy of manners by Richard Brinsley Sheridan in five acts which was first performed at Covent Garden Theatre on 17 January 1775. The story has been updated frequently, including a 1935 musical and a 1958 episode of the TV series Maverick starring James Garner and Roger Moore, with attribution.
Thomas Linley was an English bass and musician active in Bath, Somerset. Born in Badminton, Gloucestershire, Linley began his musical career after he moved to Bath at age 11 and became apprentice to the organist Thomas Chilcot. After his marriage to Mary Johnson in 1752, Linley at first supported his wife and growing family predominantly as a music teacher. As his children grew and he developed their musical talent, he drew an increasing amount of income from their concerts while also managing the assembly rooms in Bath. When the new Bath Assembly Rooms opened in 1771, Linley became musical director and continued to promote his children's careers. He was eventually able to move to London with the thousands of pounds which he had amassed from their concerts.
Michael Kelly was an Irish tenor, composer and theatrical manager who made an international career of importance in musical history. One of the leading figures in British musical theatre around the turn of the nineteenth century, he was a close associate of playwright and poet Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He also became friends with musicians such as Mozart and Paisiello, and created roles for the operas of both composers. With his friend and fellow singer Nancy Storace, he was one of the first tenors of that era from Britain and Ireland to become famous in Italy and Austria. In Italy he was also known as O'Kelly or even Signor Ochelli. Although the primary source for his life is his Reminiscences, doubt has been cast on the reliability of his own account, and it has been said that '[a]ny statement of Kelly's is immediately suspect.'
Betrothal in a Monastery is an opera in nine scenes by Sergei Prokofiev to a Russian libretto by the composer and Mira Mendelson after Sheridan's The Duenna.
Peter Robert Auty is an English operatic tenor who has worked with most of the major opera companies in Britain and a number of companies in continental Europe.
Elizabeth Ann Sheridan was an English singer who was known to have possessed great beauty. She was the subject of several paintings by Thomas Gainsborough, who was a family friend, Joshua Reynolds and Richard Samuel. An adept poet and writer, she became involved with the Blue Stockings Society and participated in Whig politics.
Thomas Linley the younger, also known as Thomas Linley Junior or Tom Linley, was the eldest son of the composer Thomas Linley and his wife Mary Johnson. He was one of the most precocious composers and performers that have been known in England. A highly talented violinist, Tom Linley was also the most promising of all native English composers between Purcell and Elgar, combining prodigious talent with a delightful personality. He is sometimes referred to as the "English Mozart". His early promise was cut short when he drowned in a boating accident, aged just 22 years.
Thomas Welsh was an English composer and operatic bass. Welsh spent most of his life in London and is now particularly remembered for his light-hearted stage works.
Robert Schell Taber was an American Broadway actor of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Robert Keeley was an English actor-manager, comedian and female impersonator of the nineteenth century. In 1823 he originated the role of 'Fritz' in Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein, the first known stage adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein.
Thomas Ryder (1735–1790) was a British actor and theatre manager, associated with the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. As a player, he was considered at his best in low comedy.
Thomas Sheridan, known as Tom Sheridan, was the only son of the Irish playwright and poet Richard Brinsley Sheridan and the soprano Elizabeth Ann Linley, although his father had at least one other son from a second marriage. Born in mid-November 1775, Thomas initially tried for a career in politics but was unsuccessful.
Margaret Kennedy was a contralto singer and actress. She was best known for her performances in male roles, especially in the operas of Thomas Arne.
Isabella Mattocks was a British actress and singer.
The Duenna is an English/German-language opera in three acts composed by Robert Gerhard to libretto by the composer, after the 1775 comedy The Duenna by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Composed from 1945 to 1947, the opera was premiered on BBC radio in 1949, conducted by Stanford Robinson and was received well. It was revised in 1951 for performance at the ISCM Festival in Wiesbaden, but there the use of popular melodies did not go down well with critics. The opera is in part atonal, following Gerhard's teacher Schoenberg.
Mariya-Cecilia Abramovna Mendelson-Prokofieva, typically referred to as Mira Mendelson, was a Russian poet, writer, and translator who was the second wife of the composer Sergei Prokofiev. She was the co-librettist of her husband's operas Betrothal in a Monastery, The Story of a Real Man, and War and Peace, as well as the ballet The Tale of the Stone Flower.
