Dance in the London Opera Season of 1813

At the beginning of the 1812-1813 season, London’s Italian Opera House, the King’s Theatre, was - as it had often been in the past - in disarray. As he had been for many years, William Taylor was impresario, but was a bad organizer and a bad payer, and seemingly had little charm to recommend him, lacking the diplomatic skills required to run an opera company or manage a theatre. Trouble had been brewing for much of the season, and I have spoken in the past about the riot of 1 May 1813 which was precipitated by off-stage drama, and which spilled over into a performance of the ‘new grand heroic ballet’ La Chaumière Hongroise; ou, Les Illustres Fugitifs, ‘The Hungarian Thatched Cottage; or, the Illustrious Fugitives.’ Choreographed by Charles Didelot, it was a grand and expensive work, and was destroyed during the commotion. Working from a discussion of the season at the King’s Theatre, this paper will try to reconstruct the input of dance into this chaotic period, which had both low and high points, one of which was a performance by Sarah Siddons in her famous role of Lady Macbeth. 

Michael Burden is Professor in Opera Studies at Oxford University; he is also Fellow in Music at New College. His published research is on aspects of London dance and theatre in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. His publications include volumes edited with Jennifer Thorp - Le Ballet de la Nuit: Rothschild B1/16/6 (2010), The Works of Monsieur Noverre Translated from the French (2014), and With a Grace not to be Captured; Representing the Georgian Theatrical Dancer, 1760-1830 (2020), which was joint winner of the 2021 Claire Brook Award for an outstanding volume on music iconography published in 2020. He is Co-Investigator with Jonathan Hicks on the electronic calendar, ‘The London Stage 1800-1844’, and is currently Chair of the Society for Theatre Research.