Isaac Bickerstaffe - Success

Success

Bickerstaff had first arrived in London in 1755 and worked as a playwright. His years growing up in Dublin, a cultural hub at the time, had greatly influenced his views on writing and the arts. He developed a view that the English language was totally unsuited for singing operas in, however skilled the composer, and that Italian was the natural language. Later in life, he was to challenge this view.

In London he initially struggled and his first work Leucothoé, a dramatic poem, was a failure. While critically well received by two reviewers it had not been set to music and performed and was widely ignored. Bickerstaff also hurt his chances of success by publicly criticising David Garrick, the leading actor-manager of the era, for "barbarity" in his recent attempts to set Shakespeare plays to music. These setbacks forced him to return to military service.

In 1760, while still serving in the marine corps, Bickerstaff collaborated with Thomas Arne, the leading British composer, on a light opera Thomas and Sally which was an enormous success. It is possible that Bickerstaff simply wrote the play and approached Arne with it or sent it to the Covent Garden Theatre where he was working. It had its opening night at Covent Garden on 28 November 1760. The play was performed repeatedly in London and soon spread around Britain and across the British Empire. It was also performed in Dublin, Philadelphia and Kingston, Jamaica. They subsequently worked together on Judith, an oratorio first performed at Drury Lane in February 1760. He went on to produce many successful comedies based on Marivaux and other French playwrights and opera librettos.

In 1762 he and Arne wrote Love in a Village considered the first English comic opera.

His The Maide of the Mill (1765), with music by Samuel Arnold and others, was also very successful. Bickerstaffe also wrote bowdlerized versions of plays by William Wycherley and Pedro Calderon de la Barca. His Love in the City (1767), The Padlock (1768), based on "The Jealous Husband" in Cervantes' Novelas (this included the character Mungo, a negro servant played by Dibdin, one of the earliest comic black roles in English drama). He also wrote The Life of Ambrose Guinet (1770).