27.
Title: The Nigger's Opera; or, The Darkie That Walked in Her Sleep and accompanying historical context in Broadview edition
Author: William Brough, for Christy's Minstrels
Genre: Drama
Medium: [The Broadview Anthology of Nineteenth-Century British Performance], ed. Tracy C. Davis
Acquisition: IS Primary Source
Date Completed: April 9, 2016
Rating: ***

With such an inflammatory title, Brough's The Nigger's Opera requires historical context, though even Davis' thoughtful work cannot dissipate the discomfort of either title or theatrical rhetoric.  Thoroughly fascinated by "the primitive other," Victorians have a history of appropriation and exploitation both, which they pursue under the guise of their racial and cultural superiority, and with the assumption that they are benign benefactor's whose mission, as a people chosen by God, is to civilize the world in their own moral image.  Of course, the actual practice of these morals is questionable, but that's a different subject for discourse. Here, it is relevant to introduce the subject of the "minstrel," or native musical performances such the British found "pleasing yet 'primitive'" (265).  According to Davis, the minstrel performances at Christy's, which introduced actors and actresses in evening clothes and blackface, parodying more serious works of the day, were viewed as wholesome and appropriate entertainment for families; she quotes a February 1862 Morning Chronicle which asserts that the musical performances "are utterly devoid of coarseness or vulgarity, and would not be out of place even in the drawing-room of the most fastidious." Davis further describes the cultural response to this phenomenon when she asserts that "In England, blackface impersonators alluded to a distance culture, separated from English rule for several generations, preserving practices rejected by British law in 1833 and detested long before. ... in Britain Christy's specific brand of it was scrupulously decorous family fare" (266).  Questions of content, representation without passing, costuming and makeup, and a whole host of other artistic and cultural influences speak to a modern understanding of the phenomenon, which Davis well presents to readers.

The content of Brough's actual work is as shallow as one might expect. The footnotes relate that this is a "Burlesque of La sonnambula composed by Vincenzo Bellini," and further connect the plot to the original in subsequent annotations. At the heart of the story is a trivial misunderstanding worthy of a Shakespearean romance: Dinah, the principal, is about to be married, but her suitor rejects her after finding the young woman in the rooms of Dolphus, "a heavy swell of color according to his own account a count being empowered by Royal Italian Opera license to change his name to Rodopho." There are significant literary allusions made, such as Jim' statement "I could act Othello's part!" (297), songs sung, and an easy resolution found when Dolphus and Jim together see Dinah sleepwalking, explaining her previous actions (and the title of the play). Not unlike my recent reading of Moore, I did not enjoy Brough's plays. However, I am glad for their inclusion in this anthology to extend my awareness and understanding of theatre in the nineteenth-century, particularly of a genre that I assumed was wholly American.



28.
Title: The Gypsy Maid
Author: William Brough, for Christy's Minstrels
Genre: Drama
Medium: [The Broadview Anthology of Nineteenth-Century British Performance], ed. Tracy C. Davis
Acquisition: IS Primary Source
Date Completed: April 10, 2016
Rating: ***

The Gypsy Maid is Burough's burlesque of The Bohemian Girl by Michael William Balfe, and trades on word play to examine race, class, performance and identity. A Count's daughter disappears, for whom he weeps for twelve years before her miraculous reappearance as a gypsy maid (another subjugated class, as Davis says on page 313 that "Until 1856, Gypsies were enslaved in what is now Romania"), and marriage to a "swell" who disguises himself as a gypsy. The plot is even less satisfying than the previous, but offers more intriguing representations of social demarcations and boundaries that speak both to the specifics of the plot and the more general of nineteenth century British life.