Vanessa L. Rogers
Vanessa L. Rogers teaches courses in Music History and Literature and coordinates the Music History area at Rhodes College. Prior to arriving at Rhodes, she taught at Wabash College and the University of Southern California. She has also worked as Research Associate for the London Stage, 1800-1900 database and as Principal Researcher for Ballad Operas Online: An Electronic Catalogue at the University of Oxford, and has held fellowships at the University of London’s Institute for Musical Research (IMR) and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Dr. Rogers has helped to convene several international conferences, most recently the Society for Theatre Research’s Theatre in the Regency Era: Plays, Performance, Practice 1795-1843, which was held at Downing College, University of Cambridge in July 2016.
Her primary area of research is eighteenth-century English stage music, and she has written on the subjects of Henry Fielding’s ballad operas, the influence of French musical comedy on eighteenth-century English popular theatre, and iconography and orchestral seating in London theatres in the Georgian era. Her current project is a book on eighteenth-century comic opera (Ballad Operas, Burlettas, and Burlesques: Comic Opera in Eighteenth-Century Britain).
Supervisors: Bruce Alan Brown (Ph.D. advisor/supervisor)
Address: Rhodes College
2000 N. Parkway
Memphis, TN 38112
Her primary area of research is eighteenth-century English stage music, and she has written on the subjects of Henry Fielding’s ballad operas, the influence of French musical comedy on eighteenth-century English popular theatre, and iconography and orchestral seating in London theatres in the Georgian era. Her current project is a book on eighteenth-century comic opera (Ballad Operas, Burlettas, and Burlesques: Comic Opera in Eighteenth-Century Britain).
Supervisors: Bruce Alan Brown (Ph.D. advisor/supervisor)
Address: Rhodes College
2000 N. Parkway
Memphis, TN 38112
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Books
Contributors:
Olive Baldwin; Jeremy Barlow; Donald Burrows; Al Coppola; Moira Goff; Robert D. Hume; David Hunter; Terry Jenkins; Berta Joncus; Matthew J. Kinservik; Ana Martínez; Judith Milhous; Felicity Nussbaum; Marcus Risdell; Fiona Ritchie; Vanessa Rogers; Robin Simon; Jennifer Thorp; Linda J. Tomko; Thelma Wilson
Papers
The benefit performance structure was perfect for trying out new musical entertainments, as the theatre personnel undergoing the benefit would take on the costs related to such an experiment. If a piece happened to succeed, it would be adopted by the theatre’s managers and performed again. If proving popular enough, it even could make the author some additional money through publication. Some of the biggest successes of the genre were first presented as benefits, the most prominent example being John Hippisley’s Flora (1729), which had nearly 200 performances in London alone within its first decade.
This chapter utilizes advertisements for the benefit performances as well as the texts and music of ballad operas themselves in order to find out more about these important premieres. We shall see that benefit performances drove the development of ballad opera, whether by initiating experimental works by new authors, prompting a musical revision of an older repertory piece (as in the case of Flora), or by encouraging a performer to try out a new character type or singing role (as with the frequent benefit revivals of The Beggar’s Opera). Though the flood of ballad opera benefits was curtailed by the Licensing Act in 1737, this chapter argues that the benefit performances occupied a central role in the development of ballad opera and helped to craft the genre that dominated British stages for the second quarter of the century.
Seating plans for English orchestras are exceedingly rare, and so Winston’s drawing is particularly valuable for those who seek iconographical evidence of how an orchestra of this period might have been arranged. We can learn much about orchestral performances in London’s theatres, specifically which instruments were present in the playhouse, prevailing ideas about seating and layout, how the stage might have accommodated the orchestra, and other related matters. Winston’s detailed drawing contains some excellent clues, giving us a substantive start at understanding how orchestral music in the late Georgian era theatre might have worked ‘on the stage’.
"[W]hen the Movement of the Air, and Tone of the voice, are exquisitely harmonious, tho’ we regard not one Word or what we hear, yet the Power of the Melody is so busy in the Heart, that we naturally annex Ideas to it of our own Creation, and, in some sort, become our selves the Poet to the Composer". Indeed, the ballad opera authors’ repeated use of familiar traditional airs, which were already fixed firmly in the audience’s mind, ensured that various levels of meaning proliferated with the hearing of the music. Cibber’s words go right to the heart of the ballad opera genre’s formula for success: spectators would have been very aware of these meanings and histories while listening, and set to clever contemporary texts, the ballad airs could help the opera attain new heights of parody and satire. Moreover, the audience’s previous knowledge of the music helped to provide a uniquely porous border between spectator and stage unseen in any other operatic genre of this period; through awareness of earlier versions of these music and texts, the audience is brought “in” to the jokes served up by the authors. This unique interrelation of music and text resulted in the brilliant popular success of this highly experimental genre. This paper examines how the careful selection of pre-existing ballad airs—along with a skillful adaptation of the lyrics—provided the foundation for this singular and highly successful model of musical theater.
Contributors:
Olive Baldwin; Jeremy Barlow; Donald Burrows; Al Coppola; Moira Goff; Robert D. Hume; David Hunter; Terry Jenkins; Berta Joncus; Matthew J. Kinservik; Ana Martínez; Judith Milhous; Felicity Nussbaum; Marcus Risdell; Fiona Ritchie; Vanessa Rogers; Robin Simon; Jennifer Thorp; Linda J. Tomko; Thelma Wilson
The benefit performance structure was perfect for trying out new musical entertainments, as the theatre personnel undergoing the benefit would take on the costs related to such an experiment. If a piece happened to succeed, it would be adopted by the theatre’s managers and performed again. If proving popular enough, it even could make the author some additional money through publication. Some of the biggest successes of the genre were first presented as benefits, the most prominent example being John Hippisley’s Flora (1729), which had nearly 200 performances in London alone within its first decade.
This chapter utilizes advertisements for the benefit performances as well as the texts and music of ballad operas themselves in order to find out more about these important premieres. We shall see that benefit performances drove the development of ballad opera, whether by initiating experimental works by new authors, prompting a musical revision of an older repertory piece (as in the case of Flora), or by encouraging a performer to try out a new character type or singing role (as with the frequent benefit revivals of The Beggar’s Opera). Though the flood of ballad opera benefits was curtailed by the Licensing Act in 1737, this chapter argues that the benefit performances occupied a central role in the development of ballad opera and helped to craft the genre that dominated British stages for the second quarter of the century.
Seating plans for English orchestras are exceedingly rare, and so Winston’s drawing is particularly valuable for those who seek iconographical evidence of how an orchestra of this period might have been arranged. We can learn much about orchestral performances in London’s theatres, specifically which instruments were present in the playhouse, prevailing ideas about seating and layout, how the stage might have accommodated the orchestra, and other related matters. Winston’s detailed drawing contains some excellent clues, giving us a substantive start at understanding how orchestral music in the late Georgian era theatre might have worked ‘on the stage’.
"[W]hen the Movement of the Air, and Tone of the voice, are exquisitely harmonious, tho’ we regard not one Word or what we hear, yet the Power of the Melody is so busy in the Heart, that we naturally annex Ideas to it of our own Creation, and, in some sort, become our selves the Poet to the Composer". Indeed, the ballad opera authors’ repeated use of familiar traditional airs, which were already fixed firmly in the audience’s mind, ensured that various levels of meaning proliferated with the hearing of the music. Cibber’s words go right to the heart of the ballad opera genre’s formula for success: spectators would have been very aware of these meanings and histories while listening, and set to clever contemporary texts, the ballad airs could help the opera attain new heights of parody and satire. Moreover, the audience’s previous knowledge of the music helped to provide a uniquely porous border between spectator and stage unseen in any other operatic genre of this period; through awareness of earlier versions of these music and texts, the audience is brought “in” to the jokes served up by the authors. This unique interrelation of music and text resulted in the brilliant popular success of this highly experimental genre. This paper examines how the careful selection of pre-existing ballad airs—along with a skillful adaptation of the lyrics—provided the foundation for this singular and highly successful model of musical theater.