Fielding and Italian Opera

Abstract

As his era's most prolific writer of ballad operas, Henry Fielding knew music well and was particularly outspoken about Italian opera, the reigning London fashion of the day. While he recognized how moving its "soft alluring Strain" could be, as a nationalist he resented the imported form, which he feared would corrupt and emasculate the English. Moreover, if he objected to it on moral grounds, he did so on aesthetic ones as well. As a believer in the supremacy of the word, he regarded the genre's elevation of music over text as a reversal of the proper hierarchy; and with the operas performed in a language that the audience did not understand, he saw them as failing in art's basic mission to inform and instruct. Indeed, in the eyes of Fielding and many of his literary peers, Italian opera came to symbolize the ultimate triumph of sound over sense.

He Stoops to Conquer: Fielding and English Song

“…There were, however, also less mercenary reasons for Fielding's attraction to Gay's new genre. Prominent among them was the fact that The Beggar's Opera represented a homegrown response to Italian opera, a genre that Fielding himself frequently attacked on nationalistic grounds (Trainor 2009). In fact, the lyrics to his most famous song stand as testament to his outspokenly jingoistic stance: For example, his Grub-Street Opera features a comic air that catalogues the groups that take pleasure in a pipe.…”