Fielding and Handel: the Beginnings of Modern Musical Theatre

Abstract

This paper analyses how Fielding “recycled” arias from Italian operas by Handel in his ballad operas of the 1730s. Current scholarship has now identified and listed the many musical borrowings that took place during this period, but it seems that the aesthetic and dramatic effects of the re-contextualisation of some well-known pieces have remained largely overlooked. And yet, whether or not the lyrics of such songs were re-texted at the time, the general comprehension of a ballad opera is necessarily conditioned by a thorough decoding of all the layers of meaning accumulated in the process of rewriting. This article focuses primarily on the Handel songs from The Grub-Street Opera and on their reappearance in Fielding’s afterpiece The Lottery.