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Artaxerxes (1763) - Thomas Augustine Arne
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Background
Thomas Arne most likely wrote his own libretto for Artaxerxes, which enjoyed a successful run at Covent Garden beginning on 2 February 1762. Artaxerxes follows the structure of Metastasio’s Italian libretto on the same subject; no other English-language opera has been recognized as following the principles of Metastasian opera seria.
The story concerns the machinations of Artaxerxes’s general, Artabanes, who has killed King Xerxes at the beginning of the opera. Artabanes misleads (Xerxes’s son) into thinking that Artaxerxes’s brother Darius committed the murder. As the plot develops, Artabanes continues to track Artaxerxes, eventually planning another assassination in order to avenge the supposed death of Artabanes’s son, Arbace. In the end, Artabanes’s schemes catch up with him, and he is exiled from Persia, leaving two pairs of lovers (Artaxerxes and Semira, Arbaces and Mandane) to celebrate their delayed union.
Although the libretto was published anonymously, Arne’s authorship is suggested by the assertion that this work is an attempt to forge a new type of English opera. Charles Burney, in fact, assumed that Arne wrote the text, in large part due to stylistic problems that the music critic saw in the libretto.
Bibliography
Title from title page: ARTAXERXES. / AN ENGLISH OPERA.
Genre: Libretto – opera
Composer: Thomas Arne, 1710-1778
Librettist: Believed to be the composer
Libretto based on: Pietro Metastasio’s Artaserse
Premiere: London, Covent Garden, 2 February 1762
Print in the UNT Collection: London: J. & R. Tonson, 1763
For further reading on Artaxerxes, see:
Farncombe, Charles. “Arne and Artaxerxes.” Opera 13 (1962): 159-61.
Fiske, Roger. English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century. London: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Herbage, Julian. “Artaxerxes.” Opera 13 (1962): 333-34.
Parkinson, John A. “Artaxerxes.” Grove Music Online, ed. Laura Macy. [Accessed 19 February 2004]. <http://www.grovemusic.com>
________. An Index to the Vocal Works of Thomas Augustine Arne and Michael Arne. Detroit: Information Coordinators, 1972.
Physical
Dimensions: 19 x 10.5 cm.
Collation: [40: A-F4], [$ 2 (-A1)], 24 leaves, pp. [7] 8-47].
Conservation: Bleed-through and some bleed-across.
Binding: Dark blue buckram cover that reads “Hibberd,” with a spine that reads “Arne ARTAXERXES Libretto 1763”.
Comments: From the Lloyd Hibberd Collection.