ABSTRACT
Like John Barnett, Edward Loder was a pupil of Ferdinand Ries, with whom he studied in Frankfurt am Main from 1826 to 1828. His operatic career may be dated from the premiere of Nourjahad on 21 July 1834, being the first new opera produced at Arnold’s rebuilt English Opera House. Loder’s theatrical output includes four works that remained unperformed. His vocal music embraces a number of glees and songs, most of which were undisguisedly adapted to the market place. Raymond and Agnes is Loder’s only opera conceived on a scale comparable to those of his contemporaries such as Balfe and Wallace. It portrays a wider range of characters and is musically more continuous than any of his other theatrical pieces. The work has a quality of invention and dramatic power that raises it to an unusual position in English nineteenth-century opera.
