From Gay to Handel: Competing operatic genres in the ballad opera "Achilles" and the Italian opera "Deidamia"

Megumi Iwasa

The 37th Annual Conference of The Japanese Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

2015/06/21

The Japanese Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

The University of Tokyo (Komaba Campus)

http://www.gakkai.ac/jsecs/Conference/?action=common_download_main&upload_id=3195

DEIDAMIA (1741) is G.F. Handel's last fully staged Italian opera in London and shares a popular classical subject based on the youthful days of Achilles with John Gay's posthumously staged ballad opera ACHILLES (1733). This paper considers the convivial relationship between the two artists and argues for the possible effect of Gay's last opera on Handel's last operatic work.