- Riot at Covent Garden Theatre
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Riot at Covent Garden Theatre
- Object:
Print
- Place of origin:
Great Britain (printed)
- Date:
early 19th century (printed)
- Artist/Maker:
Unknown
- Materials and Techniques:
Engraved print
- Credit Line:
Harry R. Beard Collection, given by Isobel Beard
- Museum number:
S.50-2008
- Gallery location:
Theatre & Performance, Room 104, case 22, shelf A
Traditionally people could come for half price towards the end of an evening show, to see the second act or the short after-pieces that followed the main play. In March 1763 the management of Covent Garden theatre announced on the playbills that only full price tickets would be available. The response was an organised riot which destroyed the interior of the theatre and forced the reinstitution of the half price concession.
The opera being performed on this night was Artaxerxes, an English opera composed by Thomas Arne with a libretto adapted from the Italian poet Metastasio’s Artaserse. This is the only known attempt to adapt one of Metasatio’s opera seria into the English language. The singers in the print are dressed in conventional opera costume of the period, with the men wearing generically 'Eastern' rather than historically correct costume, while the female singer wears a version of fashionable 18th century dress.
Arne was more successful writing light opera, and his most famous and enduring work was setting the poem of Rule Britannia! to his music.
