Imaging Mandane: character, costume, monument

Imaging Mandane from Arne’s Artaxerxes: character, costume, monument Michael Burden New College, Oxford Thomas Arne’s opera Artaxerxes was the most popular English Opera on the 18th-century London stage. But it was not an ‘English’ opera; it was an adaptation and a translation into English of a work by Italian librettist living in Vienna, set to music by an English composer who was barred from many jobs by his Catholic faith, and whose style was an amalgam of Italian and English elements. In that sense, of course, it was a true piece of English music theatre, with traditions twisted and adapted to the needs of the moment. What was atypical was its popularity; no other English opera (and certainly no Italian opera) came even close to equalling its performance record. One of the lynch-pins of the opera’s plot is the character of Mandane, a role for which Thomas Arne provided some florid and vocally complex arias for the singer who created the role, his pupil and (possible) mistress, Charlotte Brent. The popularity of the opera, the dramatic demands of the part of Mandane, and the vocal demands of the character’s arias, combined to build a role which became both a test piece and a show case for English singers. Indeed, a number of them including Anna Maria Crouch and Elizabeth Rainforth, made their debuts in the role, and were pictured in the part. Both the piece and the role therefore took on a monumentality which cannot be found in any other role in English opera. This paper examines the role of the surviving prints - which span a period from the 1760s to the long 18th century - in the development of that monumentality. Using details of gesture and costume design, it argues that the way in which the role was exploited for different singer’s personal image making created a unique interplay between the opera and the role of Mandane, which guaranteed it a place in the repertoire which otherwise consisted of new and novel works