Title: What's in a Name? English "Dramatick Opera" in the Restoration and Beyond
Speaker: Leonie Krempien

A "semi-opera" or "dramatic(k) opera" is a form of play with musical episodes that enjoyed enormous popularity on the London Restoration stage – and practically nowhere else. Prominent writer and music lover Roger North called it "semi-opera", as in, half an opera, in the 1720s, and the disparaging name has stuck since then. However, this theatrical practice fascinated people such as John Dryden and Henry Purcell, and some of their best-known works, such as King Arthur and the Fairy-Queen, are in the genre. We will explore how "dramatick opera" was conceived, what made it prevail against attempts to introduce fully sung French- and Italian-style opera in London for almost 40 years and, how much of that might be the fault of one William Shakespeare.

Leonie Krempien received MA degrees in both musicology and English Literature in 2024. She is working on a doctoral dissertation in musicology at the University of Mainz, Germany, looking at Emotion in London Baroque Opera between the death of Henry Purcell (1695) and George Frideric Handel's first successful Italian opera for London, Rinaldo (1711). Her other research interests include Renaissance Poetry and the history of German-speaking musicology.