Operatic Sources for Death’s Jest-Book

Abstract

IN June, 1825, Thomas Lovell Beddoes announced in a letter to his friend Kelsall, ‘I … am thinking of a very Gothic-styled tragedy for wh I have a jewel of a name—DEATH’S JESTBOOK’.1 The date is significant, for that month saw the staging of Meyerbeer’s opera Il crociato in Egitto at the Haymarket, a production that the poet would almost certainly have attended. (A letter to Bryan Waller Procter in 1824 shows him to be a connoisseur both of opera and of ballet, and his report on a production of Tancredi at La Scala also suggests familiarity with the repertoire of L’Académie royale de musique—the Paris Opéra. This in turn presupposes other continental trips before 1824, although there is no record of these in his patchy biography.) Here is an extract from the Haymarket programme Il Crociatio in Egitto: In an expedition to the coast of Egypt, which took place in the Sixth Crusade, in the neighbourhood of Damietta, a band of the Knights of Rhodes … was surprised, betrayed, and after a most heroic resistance overpowered, by the superior numbers of the enemy. Armand d’Orville, a young Knight of Provence, was one of this valiant band. Fainting from loss of blood, he remained among the slain. * * * Meanwhile, overtures were made to the Sultan by the Knights of Rhodes, for an exchange of prisoners: terms of peace were also offered, and an embassy from them arrived at Damietta. The action commences at the arrival of this embassy.2