Oxford A London Season: Dancing at the King’s Theatre in 1832

The London season of 1832 was quite remarkable in the history of the London Italian opera. The season was managed by Thomas Monck Mason, an imaginative man, but with little financial acumen and no experience in opera or, indeed, theatre manage[1]ment. After the season ended, he was made bankrupt and the conduct of his season became a matter for the Dramatic Committee. As well as the usual stresses of an opera season, Monck Mason had to contend with the arrival of cholera in the capital and the public response to the Reform Bill. Mason’s imagination, however, moved the opera house beyond its single mission to stage and promote Italian opera in Italian, and imported German opera in German performed by Germans, and French opera in French performed by French singers. Both of these things were firsts. The repertory was equally unusual; the German com[1]pany brought the first staging in London of Die Freischutz in German and the first staging of Beethoven’s Fidelio, which the French company brought the new Robert le Diable with its composer Meyerbeer, snatched by Monck Mason from under the nose of Henry Bishop of Covent Garden. As always, the opera was backed up – financially - by dance which had by now moved decisively from theatre dance to narrative ballet. In the 1831-32 season London had the advantage of the fall-out from an internecine war at the Paris Opéra, which saw Albert - the dancer and ballet master François-Ferdinand Decombe ousted from the company - clearing the way for the appointment of Jean Coralli as premier maître de ballet, and Filippo Taglioni, whose première of La Sylphide took place on 12 March 1832. This paper will explore Albert’s work for the 1831-32 London season, including a consideration of the images which recorded this remarkable season. Michael Burden is Professor in Opera Studies at the University of Oxford; he is also Fellow in Music at New College, where he is Dean. His published research is on the stage music of Henry Purcell, and on aspects of dance and theatre in the London theatres of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. These include a five-volume collection of opera documents, London Opera Ob[1]served, and a study of the London years of the soprano Regina Mingotti, and – edited with Jennifer Thorp – The Works of Monsieur Noverre Translated from the French.