To repeat (or not to repeat)? Dance cues in Restoration English opera

Abstract

The article examines a simple possibility pertaining to the performance of theatrical dance in opera in the Restoration English theatre, namely that the existence of many of the dances and their accompanying music in 17th- and early 18th-century English operas is hidden in the context and score of the just-performed vocal numbers. The possibility that this could be the case in one or two specific instances has been raised elsewhere, but this article considers the evidence for the expansion of these cases into a more general convention. There can be no dispute that the role of dance in dramatick opera is a significant one. In the 11 or so works in the genre written and performed in London between 1690 and 1706, there are some 71 dances indicated in the surviving play-texts; as the period progresses, hardly an act passes by the audience without one. They became one of opera ' s drawcards and range widely in type and style. The article proposes that there was more dancing than even the already copious amounts indicated in the printed sources; the repeats proposed—particularly the final ones in musical sequences—could hold the solution to the problem of some of the apparently ' missing ' dances and resolve issues raised by attempts to co-ordinate musical and spoken sources.