Verse Epistles on Italian Opera Singers, 1724–1736

Abstract

Writing from Dublin in February 1724, Jonathan Swift responded to some London gossip and joked about the ‘gallantry’ of the aged military hero the Earl of Peterborough, who had publicly commanded an apology from the castrato Senesino for his impugning the honour of the soprano Anastasia Robinson. This scandal set off a series of obscene, misogynistic, satiric epistles written to or about Mrs Robinson, Senesino, Faustina, Mrs Barbier, and Farinelli that accuse the female singers, British prudes, and others of a variety of deviant, sexually subversive practices. This article introduces and presents annotated texts of this group of epistles written between 1724 and 1736. Several have been discussed by historians of opera and literary scholars, but the whole corpus has not been identified or made readily available to opera scholars.