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Achilles (1733) - John Gay
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Background
John Gay is credited with inventing the ballad opera, a genre that blends spoken plays and previously composed songs to new texts. Although The Beggar’s Opera (1728) was his most successful endeavor, he continued to compose English musical dramas.
Achilles was finally performed in 1733, one year after Gay died. In this story, Achilles appears as a girl named Pyrrha, unknown to most of the inhabitants of the island of Scyros, in order to circumvent a prediction that he will die in battle. Deidamia (the king’s daughter) knows the secret, however, because she is carrying the disguised man’s child. After Achilles’s identity is revealed, he and Deidamia are able to wed. Then, in a fateful twist of irony, Achilles plans to join the Greeks in the Trojan War.
Bibliography
Title from title page: ACHILLES. / AN OPERA.
Genre: Ballad opera
Composer: John Gay, 1685-1732
Librettist: John Gay
Libretto based on: Greek mythology
Premiere: London, Covent Garden, 10 February 1733
Print in the UNT Collection: London: J. Watts, 1733
For further reading on Achilles, see:
Fiske, Roger. English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century. London: Oxford University Press, 1973.
"Gay, John." In Dramatic Works, ed. John Fuller; vol. 2, pp. 221-276. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983.
Hume, Robert D. “Gay, John.” Grove Music Online, edited by Laura Macy. [Accessed 11 May 2004] <http://www.grovemusic.com>
Lewis, Peter. “An Irregular Dog”: Gay’s Alternative Theatre.” Yearbook of Traditional Studies 28 (1988): 231-46.
Simpson, Claude M. The British Broadside Ballad and its Music. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1966.
Physical
Dimensions: 18.5 x 11 cm.
Conservation: Foxing; Cockling; Bleed-through; discolored tape on some pages.
Binding: Red buckram with "Hibberd" stamped in lower right corner of front cover. Spine reads "Achilles with Tunes - Gay."
Comments: From the Lloyd Hibberd Collection; North Texas property stamps.