Author Description

According To A Widely Held View In Eighteenth-century Britain, Britons Were Somehow Inherently Unmusical, And This Supposed Shortcoming Was, In Fact, A Virtue. George Colman Explicated This View In 1762, When He Wrote: For Arts And Arms, A Briton Is The Thing! / John Bull Was Made To Roar - But Not To Sing. However, Colman Was Responding To An Already Changing Cultural Landscape. The 1760s Saw The Emergence Of English-language Opera And The Rise Of A New Generation Of British Singers Who Were To Perform It. Responding To Long-held Suspicions Towards Italian Opera And Its Singers, This Was A Bold Attempt To Offer British Audiences A Vision Of Themselves As A Singing Nation, Marking A New Period In British Musical Life. This Is The Book's Central Theme: The Question Of Whether Britons Could Sing, And How It Was Negotiated In The Public Discourse In Relation To An Emergent Generation Of British Singers-- Provided By Publisher.