It's important to start by saying that this was not the first time an opera had been performed in Leeds by a non-English composer!

The Barber of Seville (in English) was first performed in Leeds in 1819, for example; The Marriage of Figaro in 1823.

Led by Sir Henry Rowley Bishop (Music Director at Covent Garden, London, and the first composer to be knighted) there was a popular vogue for foreign operas to be translated into English, and the music changed to suit the tastes of English audiences (and the abilities of English singers and instrumentalists).

In Bishop's version of Don Giovanni, for example, Giovanni doesn't sing (as it wasn't thought proper for high-status actors to sing) and his Marriage of Figaro had an entirely new overture because Mozart's was too difficult for the orchestra to play!

We've chosen this performance as the change from English language opera, to Italian (or foreign languages in general) is an important one.

It marks a slow change in the types of audiences who attended the opera. A more upper-class, high-society audience, and those with a great interest and knowledge of music, rather than casual theatre goers.

We still have a gap in our knowledge between 1832 and the late 1850s (where we begin to find many more foreign operas performed in Leeds, compared to English ones), and we will be focusing our research on this period to try and better understand whether foreign opera began to 'take over' Leeds theatres during this period.