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John Henry Johnstone
John Henry Johnstone (1749–1828), also known as 'Jack' Johnstone or 'Irish' Johnstone, was an Irish actor, comedian and singer. Life Johnstone was born probably on 1 August 1749, in the horse-barracks in Kilkenny, where his father, a quartermaster in a dragoon regiment, was then quartered. He joined a cavalry regiment, and won some reputation among his comrades for his sweet tenor voice. It is said that on his discharge his colonel recommended him for his singing in a letter to Thomas Ryder, manager of the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. Here in any case Johnstone made his first stage appearance, about 1773, as Lionel in ''Lionel and Clarissa'' (Charles Dibdin and Isaac Bickerstaffe). He was engaged for three years, and remained from seven to ten years on the Irish stage, singing principal tenor parts. The London stage On the recommendation of Charles Macklin, Johnstone and his wife were engaged by Thomas Harris at Covent Garden Theatre for three years, and Johnstone was wel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Henry Johnstone Ward
John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second Epistle of John, often shortened to 2 John * Third Epistle of John, often shortened to 3 John People * John the Baptist (died c. AD 30), regarded as a prophet and the forerunner of Jesus Christ * John the Apostle (lived c. AD 30), one of the twelve apostles of Jesus * John the Evangelist, assigned author of the Fourth Gospel, once identified with the Apostle * John of Patmos, also known as John the Divine or John the Revelator, the author of the Book of Revelation, once identified with the Apostle * John the Presbyter, a figure either identified with or distinguished from the Apostle, the Evangelist and John of Patmos Other people with the given name Religious figures * John, father of Andrew the Apostle and Saint Peter * Pope John ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Holcroft
Thomas Holcroft (10 December 174523 March 1809) was an English dramatist, miscellanist, poet and translator. He was sympathetic to the early ideas of the French Revolution and helped Thomas Paine to publish the first part of ''The Rights of Man''. Early life Holcroft was born in Orange Court, Leicester Fields, London. His father had a shoemaker's shop and kept riding horses for hire, but he fell into difficulties and was reduced to hawking as a pedlar. The son accompanied his parents on their travels. He obtained work as a stable boy at Newmarket, at the stables of Hon. Richard Vernon, where he spent his evenings chiefly on miscellaneous reading and the study of music. He gradually obtained a knowledge of French, German and Italian. When Holcroft's job at the stables came to an end, he returned to assist his father, who had resumed his trade of shoemaker in London. Around 1765, he became a teacher in a small school in Liverpool. However, he failed in an attempt to set up a pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Reeve (composer)
William Reeve (1757 – 22 June 1815) was an English theatre composer and organist. Biography Reeve was born in London. He initially studied to be a law stationer but abandoned his studies in order to study the organ with a Mr Richardson of St James's, Westminster. He became an organist in Totnes, Devon in 1781. In 1783 he returned to London to work for Astley's Amphitheatre where he composed all-sung burlettas. He also composed stage works of various kinds for John Palmer's short-lived Royalty Theatre. All of his works were entirely sung as none of these non-patent houses were permitted to perform works with any spoken drama. Some of Reeve's pieces were revived at the patent theatres after the Royalty closed in 1788. Most notably, his ballet-pantomime ''Don Juan'' (1787) was incredibly popular and both Drury Lane and Covent Garden adopted it for their repertories. In 1787 Reeve was elected to the Royal Society of Musicians and eventually served as the Governor of the organ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket (also known as Haymarket Theatre or the Little Theatre) is a West End theatre on Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use. Samuel Foote acquired the lease in 1747, and in 1766 he gained a royal patent to play legitimate drama (meaning spoken drama, as opposed to opera, concerts or plays with music) in the summer months. The original building was a little further north in the same street. It has been at its current location since 1821, when it was redesigned by John Nash. It is a Grade I listed building, with a seating capacity of 888. The freehold of the theatre is owned by the Crown Estate. The Haymarket has been the site of a significant innovation in theatre. In 1873, it was the venue for the first scheduled matinée performance, establishing a custom soon followed in theatres everywhere. Its managers have included Benjamin Nottingham Webster, John Baldwin Buckstone, S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Colman The Younger
George Colman (21 October 1762 – 17 October 1836), known as "the Younger", was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer. He was the son of George Colman the Elder. Life He passed from Westminster School to Christ Church, Oxford, and King's College, University of Aberdeen, and was finally entered as a student of law at Lincoln's Inn, London. While in Aberdeen, he published a poem satirizing Charles James Fox, called ''The Man of the People.'' In 1782 he produced his first play, ''The Female Dramatist'',at his father's playhouse in the Haymarket. The failing health of the elder Colman obliged him to relinquish the management of the Haymarket theatre in 1789, when the younger George succeeded him, at a yearly salary of £600. On the death of the father the patent was continued to the son; however, difficulties arose, as he was involved in litigation with Thomas Harris and was unable to pay the expenses of the performances at the Haymarket. He was forced to take sanctuar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inkle And Yarico
''Inkle and Yarico'' is a comic opera first staged in London, England, in August 1787, with music by Samuel Arnold and a libretto by George Colman the Younger. Plot Inkle, an English trader, is shipwrecked in the West Indies, and survives with the help of Yarico, an Indian maiden. They fall in love, but when Inkle returns to his civilization, he plans to sell Yarico into slavery to recover his financial losses while he marries a woman, Narcissa, who will give him the social standing he wants. In the end, Narcissa marries another, and Inkle remains with Yarico. Origins The supposedly true story first appeared in Richard Ligon's book ''A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes'' (1657). Richard Steele's ''The Spectator'' printed another version in March 1711, in which Yarico is a Native American, sold into slavery while bearing Inkle's child. 18th-century performances The opera was highly successful, performed 98 times at the Haymarket Theatre, and a total of 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Arnold (composer)
Samuel Arnold (10 August 1740 – 22 October 1802) was an English composer and organist. Arnold was born in London (his mother is said to have been Princess Amelia; his father was Thomas Arnold. He began writing music for the theatre in about the year 1764. A few years later, he became the director of music at Marylebone Gardens, for which he wrote much of his popular music. In 1777 he worked for George Colman the Elder at the Little Theatre, Haymarket. In 1783 he became organist at the Chapel Royal and in 1793 he became the organist at Westminster Abbey, where he was eventually buried. He also wrote the earliest version of Humpty Dumpty. He was a close friend and associate of Haydn. Works Arnold's best-known works include: *''The Maid of the Mill'' (1765) *''Abimelech'' (1768) *''The Prodigal Son'' (1773) *Incidental music for ''Macbeth'' (1778) *'' The Baron Kinkvervankotsdorsprakingatchdern'' (1781) *''The Castle of Andalusia'' (1782) *''Two to One'' (1784), libretto Geo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Arne
Thomas Augustine Arne (; 12 March 17105 March 1778) was an English composer. He is best known for his patriotic song "Rule, Britannia!" and the song "A-Hunting We Will Go", the latter composed for a 1777 production of ''The Beggar's Opera'', which has since become popular as a folk song and a nursery rhyme. Arne was a leading British theatre composer of the 18th century, working at the West End's Drury Lane and Covent Garden. He wrote many operatic entertainments for the London theatres and pleasure gardens, as well as concertos, sinfonias, and sonatas. Early life Arne was born on March 12th, 1710 in Covent Garden and baptised at St Paul's, Covent Garden. Arne's father and grandfather were both upholsterers and both held office in the Worshipful Company of Upholders of the City of London. His grandfather fell on hard times and died in the debtors' prison of Marshalsea. His father earned enough money not only to rent 31 King Street, a large house in Covent Garden, but also t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Jane Ashley
Charles Jane Ashley (1773 – 29 August 1843) was an English cellist. Ashley was born in London, the third son of musician John Ashley. He was a performer on the violoncello, and also for some time carried on the Covent Garden oratorios with his brother, General Charles Ashley, a violinist. He was also the brother of Richard and John James Ashley. According to the official book commemorating the 300th anniversary of the Worshipful Company of Musicians (published in 1904/5), he was one of the founders of the Glee Club in 1793 and an original member of the Philharmonic Society of London. On 2 May 1811, he was elected secretary of the Royal Society of Musicians, of which he had been a member since 4 May 1794. In 1791 and from 1794 to 1801, he was named by the Governors to play for the clergy of St. Paul's Cathedral, at the society's annual May benefits concert. After his father's death in 1805, he and his brother Christopher continued the oratorios, and by 1817 he was a violoncell ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Dignum
Charles Dignum (c. 1765 – 29 March 1827) was a popular tenor singer, actor and composer of English birth and Irish parentage who was active in recital, concert and theatre stage, mainly in London, for about thirty years. Origins and early training Charles was the son of an Irish Roman Catholic tailor, whose home and business moved from Rotherhithe to Lincoln's Inn Fields during the boy's childhood. He became a chorister in the Sardinian Embassy Chapel in Duke Street, where he was taken on as a vocal pupil by Samuel Webbe, the organist. The boy had plans to enter the church, but was apprenticed by his father to a carver-gilder, with whom, however, he soon fell out, and after some months he articled himself to Thomas Linley the elder, the composer and singing master. Career Linley launched him on his public career in spring 1784, at first in the Handel memorial concerts at Westminster Abbey and the Pantheon, and then at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where he first appeared as Young M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Incledon
Charles Benjamin Incledon (pronounced 'Ingledon') (1763–11 February 1826, Worcester) was a Cornish tenor singer, who became one of the foremost English singers of his time, especially in the singing of English theatre music and ballads in which he was considered without rival. Early career Charles Benjamin Incledon, the son of a doctor in St Keverne, Cornwall, was educated at Blundell's School and as a choirboy and soloist at Exeter Cathedral, under the tuition of organist and composer William Jackson. Before his voice broke, he was accustomed to sing in the Cathedral close to impromptu audiences, and once spent three days singing aboard a naval ship at Torquay. When of age he joined the Navy, and after two years' active service his fine tenor voice was 'discovered' by Admiral Hervey during a voyage to Saint Lucia, and, being generally admired in the Fleet, won the favour of Admiral Pigot. He took part in the Battle of the Saintes against the French Fleet in 1782. Upon disch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Bate Dudley
The Reverend Sir Henry Bate Dudley, 1st Baronet (25 August 1745 – 1 February 1824) was a British minister, magistrate and playwright. He was born in Fenny Compton, Warwickshire, but in 1763 his father moved the family to Essex to take up a Rectory at North Fambridge near Chelmsford. On his father's death, Bate Dudley took over the ministry.Obituary, 1824, pp. 273-276. In Essex, he owned Bradwell Lodge, a Tudor country house near Bradwell-on-Sea and engaged the architect John Johnson to construct a large extension attached to the south side of the original house, designed in a Neoclassical style. Bate Dudley was a great supporter of, and chronicled the life of the artist Thomas Gainsborough . Much of this work was published in the ''Morning Herald'' which Bate Dudley owned and ran, and the ''Morning Post'' with which he was also associated but had left to set up the ''Herald'' after a disagreement in 1780. Much of this was republished in 1915 in ''Life of Gainsborough'' b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
