ABSTRACT

At the beginning of Victorias reign, and for decades before it, music had been ubiquitous in the London theatres. The 1737 Licensing Act had restricted the performance of spoken drama in English to the two 'patent theatres', Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and given the Haymarket Theatre a monopoly in the performance of Italian opera. The evidence suggests that Italian opera in early Victorian England remained, despite some attempts by Lumley to popularize it and despite the growing constituency of 'railway people' and 'shopmen, who'd only come there for the spree', extremely exclusive socially. The fact that Covent Garden was established as an opera house under the name 'Royal Italian Opera' shows the extent to which early Victorian audiences thought of opera as a peculiarly Italian art form. The most peculiar aspect of London's Italian opera, slowly eroded by the installation of fixed seating in the pit during the 1830s and 1840s, was the notorious 'Fops' Alley'.