The Siege of Rhodes
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The Siege of Rhodes is an opera written to a text by the impresario William Davenant, with a score by five composers, including Henry Lawes and Matthew Locke. [1] It is considered to be the first English opera.
The Siege of Rhodes was first performed in a small private theatre constructed at Davenant's home Rutland House in 1656. Special permission had to be obtained from the Puritan government of Oliver Cromwell as dramatic performances were outlawed and all public theatres closed. Davenant managed to obtain permission by calling the production "recitative music", music being still permissible within the law. When it was published in 1656, it was under the equivocating title The siege of Rhodes made a representation by the art of prospective in scenes, and the story sung in recitative musick, at the back part of Rutland-House in the upper end of Aldersgate-Street, London. The 1659 reprinting gives the location at the Cock-pit in Drury Lane, a well-known theatre frequented by Samuel Pepys after the Restoration (1660). The Rutland House production also included England's first professional actress, Mrs. Coleman [2].
The plot was based on the siege of Rhodes which occurred in 1480 when the island — at the time, full of evacuated citizens of Telos and Halki — was besieged by the Ottoman fleet of Mehmed II. The score of the opera is believed to be lost. However, the original sketches by John Webb for the stage sets, themselves an innovation of the day, are extant.
