From Satirical Piece to Commercial Product: The Mid-Victorian Opera Burlesque and its Bourgeois Audience

ABSTRACT Current studies of burlesque position it as a subversive genre that questioned cultural and social hierarchies and spoke to diverse audiences. Central to this interpretation are burlesque's juxtapositions of high and low culture, particularly popular and operatic music. This article problematizes this view, proposing that mid-Victorian burlesques lost their satirical bite. Demonstrating little concern for the tastes or interests of the poorer or the most elite members of the audience, they specifically targeted the bourgeoisie. The article places three mid-Victorian burlesques in the wider context of the commercial development of the West End following the 1851 Great Exhibition. It proposes that this broader context, and not the genre's perceived social role, provides the key to understanding the impulses driving the musical choices. It argues that juxtapositions of ‘high’ and ‘low’ music were far from subversive; rather they were included for commercial reasons, offering variety – but variety within strict bourgeois limits.

In addition, the 'source' texts most often came from classical mythology, Shakespeare and opera. Burlesque had a shifting relationship to other popular genres, combining ballad opera's use of satire with the spectacle of extravaganza and the humour and direct addresses to the audience of pantomime. 6 Eighteenth-century ballad opera is a particularly important precursor of burlesque because of the way in which music functions in both genres. 7 Like burlesques, ballad operas were structured as plays with interpolated music that was accessible and singable and had been appropriated from a variety of sources, namely opera and ballads (urban and rural). 8 In addition to these sources, burlesques also included minstrelsy and music hall. he pre-existing music was given new lyrics, creating comic intertextual references if audiences were aware of the original version.
Burlesques were popular throughout the nineteenth century, reaching their height in the 1860s and being gradually displaced by opéra boufe and musical comedy from the 1870s. 9 hey were, therefore, performed during a long period that saw considerable social, political and theatrical change. An important aspect of this change involved how theatres were licensed. Traditionally, the theatres royal in London -Covent Garden and Drury Lane -had operated under royal patents granted by Charles II in 1662. he patents had powerful implications because they granted monopoly over spoken, or 'legitimate', drama. he patents also ensured that the two theatres could perform any type of production all year round, as long as they received the approval of the Examiner of Plays at the Lord Chamberlain's Oice, to whom all new plays were submitted for licensing, and who acted as censor. 10 Other minor theatres received licences annually and were prohibited from producing spoken drama. 11 Jane Moody has observed that in response the minor theatres produced 'illegitimate' theatrical pieces, such as burlesque, extravaganza and pantomime, which relied on visual and musical expression in order to circumvent the prohibition on the use of dialogue. In practice, however, the diference between the productions ofered by patent and minor 6 Ballad operas satirized issues of the day and musical and theatrical tastes and practices. See Rogers, 'John Gay, Ballad Opera and the héâtres de la foire', 189-91. For more detail on the development of burlesque from ballad opera and extravaganza, see Walter H. theatres was not clear-cut. he minor theatres found many ingenious ways around the Licensing Act, and the patent theatres, responding to competition, also staged a range of popular theatrical genres that showcased music and visual spectacle. 12 he licensing situation was debated in 1832 by a select committee. he patent theatres became the subject of scrutiny because of their inancial diiculties and their seeming lack of support for native talent. hey complained of the encroachment of the minor theatres onto the territory preserved by the patents and the ensuing competition this created. he minor theatres complained that, by putting on musical and spectacular entertainments at the expense of legitimate drama, the patent theatres were not fulilling the obligations of their patents. 13 Eventually, the minor theatres gained the right to stage legitimate drama with the heatre Regulation Act of 1843. his act consolidated the power of the Lord Chamberlain to license theatres and to read and censor texts of any pieces produced. 14 Burlesque's position as an 'illegitimate' genre being produced in minor theatres that sought ways around licensing acts and censorship has naturally coloured scholars' readings of it. For Schoch, burlesque ofered a means of articulating multiple and alternative political perspectives. He argues that burlesques often commented on contemporary political debates, particularly political emancipation, social class issues, republicanism and revolution. Schoch acknowledges that burlesques took a variety of political attitudes, but the examples he examines question the status quo and imagine alternatives. 15 Moody's ground-breaking research into illegitimate theatre characterized genres such as burlesque as challenging sites of 'political, moral and generic transgression', 16 which enjoyed relative freedom from the censorship mechanisms. 17 In consequence of this freedom, burlesques could critique contemporary political and 12 Jane Moody, Illegitimate heatre in London, 1770-1840(Cambridge, 2000, 46. 13 For details, see Dideriksen, 'Repertory and Rivalry', 21. 14 Eric Walter White, A History of English Opera (London, 1983), 295. 15 Schoch, Not Shakespeare, 151-87. Schoch also argues that burlesque functioned as a critique of contemporary Shakespeare performers and productions, reclaiming Shakespeare from those who would unintentionally harm him through 'bardolatry'. See ibid., 4; see also Schoch, '"Chopkins, Late Shakespeare": he Bard and his Burlesques, 1810-1866', English Literary History, 67 (2000), 973-91. 16 Moody, Illegitimate heatre, 2. 17 Ibid., 18. his is certainly true of the burlesques examined here. he manuscripts submitted to W. B. Donne and held at the British Library (Add. MSS 52991 P, 53047 G and 53073 D) show that licences were granted within 24 hours, and there is no evidence that changes were requested. On other occasions the licensing process could be unwieldy, intrusive and contradictory, demanding cuts, suppressing entire plays and seeming to allow a play to be performed and then retracting the decision. social issues. 18 Subsequent research on burlesque, whether undertaken by musicologists or by theatre historians, has cemented its position as a subversive genre: a genre that unsettles cultural, social and even gender norms and hierarchies. Fiona Macintosh proposes that burlesque acted as 'a relatively radical forum for serious debate'. 19 Laura Monrós-Gaspar argues that 'the fact of burlesquing -or subverting -a classical text embodies an act of transgression which […] entails strong ideological concerns on the cultural division of the classes and a stagnant education system which was based on Classics as a status marker'. 20 Finally, Tunbridge emphasizes the role of burlesque in providing 'social critique' and 'satire on contemporary social concerns' and 'theatrical hubris'. 21 Overwhelmingly, studies of burlesque produce an impression of a genre that questioned the status quo, that imagined new social and political alternatives, that participated in controversial debates and that traversed boundaries between classes and diferent cultural genres. Following the 1843 heatre Regulation Act, burlesque still proved popular and retained a regular position on the programme of most minor theatres because audiences continued to demand it, 22 but the nature of burlesque changed. Burlesques in the second half of the nineteenth century have received less attention than those in the irst, probably because the genre began to lose its satirical bite. 23 Satire is often considered as challenging and critical, and this is largely how its role in opera burlesque has been understood until now. However, a signiicant school of literary theorists see satire as a conservative genre that upholds existing dominant norms. 24 We shall see 18 Moody argues that because illegitimate drama was so centred on visual and musical language, there was no provision for scrutinizing its untraditional texts. Moody, Illegitimate heatre, 18. However, other researchers of censorship have found that the remit of the Examiner of Plays included genres such as pantomime, ballet and song lyrics. Worrall, heatric Revolution, 38. Managers and playwrights would have found creative ways around censorship, perhaps through mime and improvisation, but it seems unlikely that such a subversive genre would enjoy the kind of freedom that Moody suggests. 19  that this conservative reading of satire is actually applicable to burlesques in the mid-Victorian period, which are less questioning of social norms and hierarchies than their predecessors. Tunbridge alludes to a change in the nature of the genre in her examination of two burlesques of Byron's Manfred from 1834 and 1863 respectively. She notices that the social satire of the earlier burlesque is much more challenging than that of the later one, which does not have the same 'contemporary resonance'. 25 She links this diference to the change in theatre licensing, arguing that 'fully licensed, burlesques lost their political potency, their ability to critique the establishment'. 26 Macintosh also alludes to a shift towards a 'more socially homogeneous, more solidly bourgeois audience' in the last two decades of the century, 27 but does not examine the implications of this change for burlesque. Finally, Schoch briely mentions a change in burlesque towards the end of the century, when the genre took on a distanced relationship to Shakespeare and became more titillating and less satirical and critical. He associates this with audiences' lack of familiarity with Shakespeare owing to their exposure to a restricted repertoire resulting from the fashion for long runs. 28 his reluctance to examine changes in the genre after mid-century has led to a rather onesided understanding, which overwhelmingly depicts the genre as laden with social and political potency, even in its later guise. Few researchers have dealt seriously with the issue of who actually attended burlesques, even though this is central to understanding the messages burlesque was intended to convey. 29 Schoch proposes that through the use of slang language and references to drinking and ighting, 'burlesque constructed its audience as a collective of "fast" young men'. 30 He acknowledges that audiences may have been more diverse than this in reality, but argues that burlesque courted this particular bourgeois group. he reading seems to tell only part of a complicated story. Schoch's book spans burlesque across almost the whole of the nineteenth century, but does not acknowledge changes in audience make-up across this period, across diferent burlesque theatres or in response to developments in the West End more broadly. Tunbridge and Monrós-Gaspar agree that while burlesques were not exclusive, audiences were expected to be well informed about the burlesque's subject matter: music, theatre, current afairs 25  and classical mythology. 31 It follows that burlesque producers and writers expected audiences to enjoy a considerable degree of education.
More often, researchers assert that burlesque audiences were diverse. Macintosh tells us that, along with melodrama, farce and pantomime, burlesque shared 'a relatively broad-based audience' (at least until around 1870). 32 Regarding classical burlesque, Monrós-Gaspar states that when touring burlesque productions were put on in small and provincial theatres to uneducated audiences much of the humour would have been produced by the performance, rather than by the parody of the original source subject. 33 his suggests that audience make-up was variable depending on location, and that diferent aspects of the production were enjoyed by diferent demographics. Similarly, Montemorra Marvin argues that mid-Victorian burlesques appealed to a broad sector of society, traversing class boundaries because the genre could communicate on diferent levels. 34 Opera-goers would understand intertextual references, and the 'shared territory' of 'external associations, localized allusions and lampooning of social pretences and circumstances' would have appealed to a wide variety of people. 35 Several researchers have understood the mixture of musical and theatrical genres that burlesque references and interpolates as an important aspect of the genre's apparent appeal to diverse audiences. At the same time, these mixtures have often been seen as evidence of burlesque's subversive, challenging nature. Moody sees the lampooning of elite genres through frequent 'irreconcilable clashes', 'unresolved dissonances' and 'incongruous juxtapositions' as one of burlesque's main strategies for disrupting and questioning cultural and, implicitly, social hierarchies. 36 Building on Moody's reading, Montemorra Marvin also highlights the juxtaposition of 'seemingly incongruous well-known repertories' and of 'traditional lower-and upper-class entertainments' in mid-Victorian opera burlesque. 37 She proposes that burlesque traversed cultural and social boundaries because it translated an 'artiicial high art genre into an "earthy" low art form'. 38 Divisions between 'high art' and 'popular entertainment' were developing in the second half of the nineteenth century, but at the same time the status and meanings of popular music were complex. Building on recent Victorian reception studies, I argue that we need to consider carefully the relationship of the bourgeoisie to the popular genres used in burlesque, and beware of assuming that musical juxtapositions were necessarily received as incongruous or dissonant ( subversive). 39 he possible meanings created by placing a parlour ballad or a musichall or minstrel song alongside an aria require closer scrutiny. Instead of reading juxtapositions as dissonant or as part of burlesque's broad appeal, I demonstrate that the musical choices in mid-Victorian opera burlesque were designed to appeal to a bourgeois audience. his is not to say that the audiences consisted solely of the middle classes; the tiered pricing system ensured that burlesques were accessible to workingclass people, and members of the gentry would also have attended. But I propose that producers of mid-Victorian burlesques demonstrated little concern for the tastes or interests of the poorer or indeed the most elite members of the audience. However, I also argue that producers targeted diferent demographics within the middle classes, depending on the strategies of the theatre managements and the time at which the burlesques were performed. In examining the music in mid-Victorian burlesque, I shed new light on the ways in which West End theatre managers perceived middleclass cultural tastes and values and on the bourgeoisie's relationship to opera. At the same time, a safer, respectable and commercial image of burlesque begins to emerge.
Historians regularly examine the Victorian middle classes (their leisure pursuits, home life, gender roles and a whole range of other topics), 40 but there still exists considerable disagreement regarding the deinition of exactly whom they comprised. Like William Weber, I see the middle classes as a 'frequently self-conscious social group but neither monolithic nor uniied'. 41 here would, of course, have been vast disparities in income, occupation, social circle and cultural tastes and knowledge. Historians have found a number of ways of dealing with this diverse and complicated group of people. In her study of Victorian middle-class art collecting, Dianne Sachko Macleod focuses on individuals before drawing conclusions about broader groups. his enables her to construct the Victorian middle-class art collector in more depth and detail than has previously been possible, and it allows her to refute some hackneyed stereotypes. 42 Unfortunately, there are no records of purchasers of burlesque tickets, so it is not possible to reproduce the detail of Macleod's focus on individuals in this study. 39 Derek Scott argues that 'high-and low-status music cannot be mapped directly onto high-and lowclass consumers'. However, I have tried to be as speciic as possible about the group of people being discussed, referring to their occupations or where they fell on the income spectrum. More often, I have used an approach put forward by Elizabeth Langland in her study of Victorian etiquette manuals. Langland argues that we should not understand these manuals as a relection of a '"real" historical subject' but as documents deliberately intended to 'construct' and 'consolidate' a genteel middle class by distinguishing this group from the working classes and other factions of the middle classes. 43 Similarly, this article draws on advertising, newspaper reviews and the texts and music of the burlesques themselves in order to identify how burlesque audiences were constructed, rather than how they were constituted in reality. Dror Wahrman argues that the middle class never was a tangible entity, but rather an imagined body that existed somewhere within the 'space of possibilities between social reality and its representations'. 44 Its position within this space of possibilities would change according to the needs of the time (political in Wahrman's study). Wahrman examines the diferent ways in which the middle class was imagined in political language at important moments between 1780 and 1840, suggesting that the vagueness of the deinition of the middle class was often useful. Similarly, I argue that diferent West End theatre managers imagined this heterogeneous, ambiguous and luid body of people in diferent ways. I seek to nuance our understanding of burlesque, tracing the steady 'bourgeoisiication' and commercialization of the genre by examining three opera burlesques across the 1860s, a key decade in the transition of the West End: 45 Leicester Silk Buckingham's Lucrezia Borgia! At Home and All Abroad, performed at the St James's heatre on 16 April 1860; Henry James Byron's Little Don Giovanni, or Leporello and the Stone Statue, performed at the Prince of Wales's heatre on 21 December 1865; and William Schwenck Gilbert's Robert the Devil; or, the Nun, the Dun, and the Son of a Gun, performed at the Gaiety heatre on 21 December 1868. hese burlesques were written by some of the best-known, most successful and most proliic burlesque writers of their time, and so are representative of trends in the genre. hey are also illuminating because, as we shall see, they indicate that the musical choices for diferent burlesques could operate according to diferent models in order to appeal to diferent types of audiences within the luid and heterogeneous Victorian middle class. Accordingly, I examine the particular circumstances of each theatre, demonstrating important diferences at three theatres with seemingly similar clienteles 43 Langland, Nobody's Angels, 27-9. 44  and located in close proximity within the West End. In doing so, I demonstrate the importance of considering nuances in audiences, theatres and musical choices in understanding the genre of burlesque and the way it was received. Examining burlesque presents signiicant philological issues. Burlesque writers and producers viewed the genre as something disposable, to be written and produced quickly and then replaced by the next burlesque. Accordingly, those involved in burlesque productions appear to have been little concerned with preserving their work. Fortunately, the texts of many burlesques did make it into print, usually to enable provincial theatre companies to stage the same burlesques produced in London. 46 he British Library also holds a large collection of burlesque manuscripts submitted to the Examiner of Plays. Many texts, therefore, are preserved in either manuscript or printed form, but the same unfortunately does not apply to the music. No scores or parts have yet emerged for the productions discussed here, and this seems to be the norm as regards burlesque. 47 Writers and arrangers evidently felt little need to preserve musical scores and parts, possibly because the music was usually pre-existing and so the original sources could be used if the burlesque were to be produced elsewhere. he titles of the music in burlesques are identiied in the printed librettos and manuscripts. hese provide a good indication of the tune to which the lyrics were to be sung, though titles are often incomplete or misspelt. In several cases the new lyrics provide the key to identifying the source. he Victoria and Albert Museum heatre and Performance Archives hold some burlesque librettos alongside a wealth of other related material, including playbills, images of performers, productions and theatres, and newspaper clippings of reviews, which help to put lesh on our understanding of this fascinating genre.

Cleaning up burlesque
In the irst half of the nineteenth century, the theatre had a tarnished reputation as a place of moral transgression and the public display of sexuality. 48 Dimly lit foyers and boxes ofered prime locations for assignations with prostitutes and private drinking. However, by 1880 the theatres of the West End were considered impeccably respectable. his transformation has often been perceived as a middle-class reclamation of the theatre, but Jim Davis and Victor Emeljanow have argued that contemporary partisan writers such as Charles Dickens and Clement Scott, interested in promoting the theatre's redemptive powers, embellished such narratives. Instead, they argue that the transformation was more strongly inluenced by capitalist than by moral factors: the West End's new-found respectability was intrinsically bound to its commercialization. 49 Of course, the West End and its theatres had long been associated with commercial entertainment, but historians have observed a change mid-century, which saw the area become 'a site of mass consumption'. 50 Earlier in the century the City of London was the centre of commercial life, but by mid-century the West End contained the most sumptuous shops and the best entertainment. Developments in retailing, publishing, tourism, advertising, transportation and new institutions all contributed to the West End's development into a 'shopping district, tourist site, [and] entertainment centre' that was particularly attractive to bourgeois women. 51 hese broader commercial changes are mirrored in the development of the West End's theatres. Financial depression from the 1830s and 1840s and the loss of a local audience as the West End's regular, aluent patrons moved out to the suburbs contributed to what Davis and Emeljanow have described as a period of uncertainty, resulting in a cessation in theatre building between 1843 and 1866. Consequently, theatre managers were forced to consider new ways of targeting new audiences. An important part of the strategy was to 'ofset' the 'decrease in regular playgoers by turning the West End itself into an elaborate theme park' that appealed to tourists. 52 In order to do this, managers would try to recreate the 'sense of occasion', the 'respectability', the 'sense of wonder' and the 'competitiveness' of the Great Exhibition. 53 Tourism ofered an important incentive to improve the respectability of the West End, as it was vital that visitors felt safe. Increased wages, better transport links and an outlow of Londoners to the suburbs meant that the typical West End tourist was middle class, and theatre managers began to target bourgeois consumers who had travelled to London from the provinces or suburbs, as did managers of West End department stores. 54 he development of mid-Victorian burlesque has not been examined against this context, but it too should be understood as part of this broader 'bourgeoisiication' and commercialization of the West End, driven in part by tourism. In the new theatrical climate of increasing respectability it might have been expected that a subversive, transgressive, irreverent genre like burlesque might not survive, but as Montemorra Marvin has shown, burlesque continued to thrive and 'by the 1880s, almost every truly popular opera had become the subject of a burlesque'. 55 Certainly there was an underlying anxiety that burlesque's past as a site of subversion and its future (which 49  some feared was in a vulgarized version of the genre) meant that it was a potentially dangerous genre which could easily become disreputable. For example, a writer for he Examiner criticized the lowest-common-denominator humour found in some burlesques: Mr F. Talfourd, Mr William Brough, and Mr Byron, the chiefs of the modern school of burlesque, are all capable of dispensing with the afectations of wit that are now practised for delusion of the ignorant [ … ]. Is it not, then, worse than superluous that they should spoil their sport with a mere strain after false wit, and aim also by the use of slang words that take the place of humour with the idle and stupid, to amuse the worse at the cost of annoyance to the better half of any but a taproom audience? 56 Implicit in the criticism is the idea that the slipping standards of burlesque made it vulnerable to appropriation by the vulgar society found in taverns. Peter Bailey has found that the middle classes feared that their social identity could be compromised during leisure hours, because leisure activities were not always clearly demarcated across social lines. Consequently, there was a risk that a middle-class person may inadvertently end up enjoying an entertainment similar to that enjoyed by someone from a lower social class. 57 If burlesque was to be demarcated as middle-class entertainment, its diference from working-class culture's vulgarity and lack of respectability must be highlighted. Diferentiation from the working classes was important across the middle classes for various reasons. he lower middle classes were concerned with 'separating themselves from their inferiors' because they had emerged from the working classes and did not want to return. 58 Other sectors of the middle class were 'susceptible to the desire to improve manners and morals' and were, therefore, suspicious of the perceived vulgarity, violence and acceptance of drinking and licentiousness of working-class culture. 59 For others, their behaviour and tastes were converging with the aristocracy, 60 and they were also suspicious of the working classes as potentially 'irresponsible agitators' who might upset social stability, as had happened on the Continent. 61 For all of these reasons, 56 1850-1980(Harmondsworth, 1985. Wiener argues that the middle classes and the aristocracy accommodated one another, sharing similar tastes, education and values, leading to a 'culture of containment' and the decline of industrialism in England. 61 Checkland, he Rise of Industrial Society in England, 304. diferentiation from working-class culture and 'bourgeoisiication' of the genre proved important strategies to ensure the continued commercial success of burlesque.
Reviews of burlesques throughout the 1860s showed sensitivity towards potential vulgarity and dissolution. A review of the performance of L'Africaine; or, he Queen of the Cannibal Islands at the Strand heatre on 18 November 1865 contains an interesting example of how the audience apparently dealt with a potentially scandalous event: In the stalls, which were occupied for the most part by ladies and gentlemen, manifestly of good social position, and all dressed in evening costume, there was seated, in company with a friend, a tall and remarkably pretty woman, the extraordinary lowness of whose dress was a general subject of observation, and obviously gave great scandal to the audience, among the female portion of whom a painful sensation was clearly perceptible. At last public indignation found expression in a brief emphatic form. No sooner had the curtain fallen on the irst play than there was heard from the gallery a voice uttering in slow and wellmeasured accents an injunction which could be intended but for one person in the vast assembly. Pale with emotion, yet still retaining her gentle, placid look -for there was no taint of immodesty in her demeanour -she quietly drew her opera cloak over her shoulders, and then tied it tightly round her neck. In a few minutes afterwards she rose from her seat, and, leaving behind her friend, a modestly-dressed woman, walked out of the house, amid hisses from the gallery and stern silence, not less eloquent, in the stalls and boxes. 62 his account may have been imagined or at least embellished. Many critics, journalists and social commentators attended West End theatres and published reviews and comment pieces that were motivated by a desire for the theatre to be a place of moral and social improvement and education. 63 In general it is important to treat reviews with scepticism because most London newspapers of the time were indebted to political groups, and it was also standard practice for theatre managers to ofer free tickets in exchange for positive reviews. 64 At the same time, reviews are often the only sources for gaining insight into the performance practices and reception of particular productions. his particular piece suggests that the question of respectability was of high importance to the reviewer, and probably also to burlesque producers and audiences during the 1860s. Past associations between the theatre and prostitution may also explain the description of the reassuringly strong reaction to the ofence caused by the immodestly dressed woman. Even if the account was ictional, the fact that it was written at all suggests a shift in opinion about burlesque, especially when considered against other positive press notices. 62  It was precisely its bourgeois popularity that led commentators to defend burlesque and reclaim it for the middle classes. For example, an article in he Times on W. S. Gilbert's burlesque of Robert le diable was clear that 'like the other extravaganzas from Mr Gilbert's pen, Robert the Devil shows an endeavour to avoid the ordinary vulgarities of grotesque drama, and bring its most elegant contingencies into the foreground'. 65 In fact, an article dedicated to Gilbert's achievements in he Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News credited him with reforming burlesque by purging it of 'music-hall melodies, stale puns, low comedians in women's clothes, and the incessant and unvarying breakdowns of old-fashioned burlesque'. 66 Clearly the elements associated with working-class culture were at issue here: the music, the vulgar humour and the unsightly physicality of the 'breakdown' dances associated with blackface minstrelsy. Similarly, a review of the 1860 St James's heatre production of Lucrezia Borgia! was approving, inding that 'the points of the opera are adroitly taken up, and applied without vulgarity'. 67 A genre once associated with 'vulgarity, lowness, political radicalism and cultural subversion' 68 was now being praised for its taste, elegance and respectability.
Not only were references to working-class music and dance less tolerated during the mid-Victorian period, but also the subject matter and tone of opera burlesques changed. hey contained innocuous language and little sexual innuendo (unlike music-hall performances). here was also minimal social satire. One brief reference can be found in Lucrezia Borgia!, in which criticism of high income taxes provided material for one of the songs sung to the tune of 'he Glorious Vintage of Champagne' (see Table 1 for full details of the music in Lucrezia Borgia! ): When income tax we're forced to pay, Of tenpence in the pound, And for the hope 'twill end some day here's not the slightest ground One compensation doth remain -'Tis all you'll get, I fearhe glorious vintage of champagne As cheap as ginger beer. 69 65   over-taxed. 71 he working classes did not earn enough to pay income tax and so were unafected. 72 Such references, therefore, were directed expressly at the middle classes as a criticism of policy that directly afected them. However, the political satire in this instance is rather light-hearted. It displays precisely the qualities that have led literary theorists to argue that satire is often conservative: it criticizes an individual concept, rather than the broader system, suggesting that particular aspects of it are fallible, but that the system itself is sound. It also functions as a 'safety valve', allowing writers and audiences a release for their frustrations without inciting concrete action. 73 Mid-Victorian burlesques certainly did not criticize the aristocracy or the political system in any serious way. Gentle mockery was in evidence rather than the 'willingness to "smash the aristocracy"' demonstrated by Gilbert Abbott à Beckett in earlier burlesques. 74 It could perhaps be argued that the song's reference to taking comfort in alcohol could be considered in a challengingly satirical light, especially considering the number of temperance movements in existence at the time. However, the fact that the alcohol is champagne rather than beer would have mitigated potential for controversy. he song goes on to sneer at the poor quality of this cheap champagne, suggesting that its purpose was to appeal to reined tastes: he lowering of characters' social status was another common means of introducing political satire in burlesque in the irst half of the nineteenth century, 76 but this too is missing from the three burlesques under discussion here. Either the circumstances of the characters are unchanged in the burlesque, or the characters are given bourgeois social standing -making money in property or being interested in stocks and shares and inancial speculations. Topical references were still included, but with the purpose of deining the middle-class audience rather than disrupting the status quo. 'popular gentility', while Margate is to be sneered at, and assuming that those who holiday in Boulogne will not 'feel altogether up to Rome'. 77 Holiday destinations emphasized class diference, with diferent 'social tones' at each resort. 78 Margate was familiar to Londoners because it was close enough to go for the day. his seaside town mostly attracted working-class and lower-middleclass day trippers, 79 and it is likely that many in the audience would indeed have sneered at it. On the other hand, foreign holiday-making was an important indicator of social standing as such excursions allowed the middle classes to imitate aristocratic behaviours and tastes. 80 he irst foreign package holidays pioneered by homas Cook were aimed at the upper middle classes; the working and lower middle classes were priced out. 81 he preference for Boulogne relected Rome's closer association with the aristocracy as a key destination on the grand tour. It perhaps also mirrored the tastes of the Gaiety audience, who demanded entertainment rather than education, and may well have preferred a seaside holiday to a cultural experience. 82 Evidently, the Gaiety management constructed its audience in quite a speciic way, encouraging them to identify with and enjoy the sentiments of snobbery and lack of stomach for an aristocratic cultural experience.
Misunderstanding the audience: Lucrezia Borgia! at the St James's heatre he new-found respectability of burlesque, its diferentiation from working-class culture and its bourgeois appeal can be found most clearly in its music. his is certainly true of Lucrezia Borgia!, performed at the St James's heatre in April 1860. We have already seen that in 1860 the theatres were beginning to beneit from the West End's growing reputation for propriety, but they were only just beginning to develop the mass consumerism and promotional strategies that would encourage middle-class and 77  he St James's heatre was opened in December 1835 by the famous tenor John Braham as a potential home for English opera, and appealed to fashionable, uppermiddle-class audiences. A major boon was the patronage of Queen Victoria, who regularly attended through the 1840s and 1850s. Braham did not last long as manager and was succeeded by John Mitchell, who introduced French plays and opera given in the original language. his was successful and through the 1840s the St James's became known as 'the French theatre'. 84 However, the taste for French theatre waned. Mitchell reacted by bringing in German companies, but these performances failed to appeal and he eventually gave up on the St James's. 85 he theatre struggled to position itself from the mid-1850s and saw several managers come and go. At the beginning of 1859 the upper-tier ticket prices there were far higher than those at the Gaiety and the Prince of Wales's (see Table 2, columns 1, 3 and 4). he worst seats in the theatre would have been within the reach of the upper working classes, but generally ticket prices were not set in order to encourage the working classes to attend. 86 However, in October 1859 a new manager, F. B. Chatterton, took over and slashed prices (see Table 2, column 2). October's playbills show that the best seats in the house were now priced at £2 2s. rather than £3 3s., and the gallery at 6d. instead of 1s. he gallery and pit prices were emphasized, advertised in bold at the top of the playbill. he reduced prices were commented on in the press, which noted that Chatterton did not 'mean to depend on the aristocratic neighbourhood in which the house is situated. he choice of pieces also comes as proof.' 87 heatre protectionists worried that the strategy of slashing prices boded ill for the theatre, fearing that a less aluent audience would spell decline in both behaviour and repertoire. 88 Indeed the St James's heatre received criticism in the press for showing pieces of 'folly' and 'ribald vulgarity'. 89 Chatterton did not manage to carve out a niche for the theatre. 83 hese strategies would become even more pronounced at the turn of the century with the advent of musical comedy. Nonetheless, the St James's heatre could still rely on its past reputation as a fashionable favourite of Queen Victoria, and it ofered a sumptuous setting with 'a gorgeous chandelier', 'golden ornaments' on the boxes and balconies and 'deep crimson draperies'. 92 he theatre's audience in 1860 is therefore diicult to identify. Chatterton's prices were clearly aimed at a working-class and lower-middle-class audience, yet some of the older, more fashionable audience would probably still have attended. he audience at the St James's at this time was probably the most diverse among those of the three theatres considered here, and this is relected in the reception of Lucrezia Borgia! he structure of the burlesque, as a play with interpolated songs, is indebted to ballad opera. However, the music in Lucrezia Borgia! includes a greater proportion of operatic numbers than is traditionally found in ballad opera (see again Table 1). It also difers in this respect from that of the other two burlesques considered here. Five of the numbers drew on music from the original opera in equivalent places within  the narrative, compared with three from Don Giovanni and one from Robert le diable (see Tables 3 and 4). Most of the other numbers were also taken from Continental opera -Norma, Martha and La gazza ladra. Members of the audience were assumed to be familiar with the plot, characters and music of the original opera. In presenting the opera in an English adaptation, the burlesque catered to the widely held, middleclass suspicion of Italian opera as a foreign art form. he adaptation would also have resonated with the common practice of presenting Continental opera in English and of providing Italian arias in sheet-music versions with new English lyrics, such   Les bavards is an operetta by Ofenbach; the particular number is not speciied. he lyrics suggest that they might have been set to the tune of 'Quel bavard insupportable', but it is not certain Air changes to 'Proclamation de Popolani' (Barbe bleue) From Ofenbach's Barbe-bleue; probably refers to 'J'apporte les volontés', which is the only substantial solo for the character Popolani. he new lyrics also it the melody Quartette-Robert, Bertram, Isabella and Raimbault. Air, 'Mon Oscar' Jules Javolet, composer of comic opera and writer of violin methods. 'Mon Oscar' was probably a number from one of his operettas, but its provenance is not speciied in the libretto or playbill (continued ) as the arrangements made by Charles Jefery of music from Norma and Il trovatore (incidentally, two operas drawn upon by the burlesques examined here).
he way in which operatic numbers were treated in the burlesque may be related to the method of presentation of Continental opera in London playhouses earlier in the century. Although the second half of the nineteenth century saw increased sensitivity to the composer's wishes and idelity to the score, 93 2016). b At the première this song was not included. It was added in a revised and abridged version, in which all numbers from 'Allons gais chasseurs' to 'Loup y es tu?' were cut. he abridged version may be found at the British Library: W. S. Gilbert, Robert the Devil; or, the Nun, the Dun, and the Son of a Gun (London, n.d.). he Bodleian Library holds a copy of the original version. a complete restructuring of the original opera, and alteration of the vocal parts to accommodate the new English lyrics. When operas were performed in Italian the transformation was less drastic, but there were still signiicant modiications of vocal parts to suit the capabilities of the singers and simpliications of complex numbers. 95 Simplicity and practicality were guiding principles: subplots were cut to simplify the action and reduce the running time, and new scenes or numbers were inserted, including arias that suited the capabilities of the singers. 96 It was also common to interpolate numbers from the same composer's back catalogue. 97 he use in the burlesque of interpolated music from other Italian operas may have been considered appropriate in retaining stylistic congruity, while the inclusion of English ballads also conformed to the standard pattern of opera adaptations earlier in the century. 98 In both English and Italian adaptations, recitative was often curtailed because it was deemed boring by audiences. Dialogue moved the action along, while musical numbers were used to relect on events and emotions. Catchy choruses and simple melodies were retained, while complex harmony, music that was wedded to action, and complicated, lengthy and dramatic ensemble numbers were cut. Similarly, in Lucrezia Borgia! the operatic numbers retained in the burlesque were taken from lyrical arias or duets. Generally, choruses conveying action were removed: the burlesque opened not with the opening number of the opera ('Nella fatal di Rimini e memorabil guerra') but with a popular solo ballad for Orsini in which he narrates (to dramatic interjections by the chorus) how he was warned by an old man that Lucrezia Borgia would kill him and Gennaro. he chorus that closes the scene, in which Gennaro's friends recognize Lucrezia Borgia and accuse her of killing members of their families, was also removed. Instead, Lucrezia's crimes (of giving bad investment advice) were narrated in spoken dialogue.
he removal of music wedded to action and of dramatic ensembles created a separation of music and dramatic development that was typical of English opera in the irst three decades of the nineteenth century. Solo numbers, relecting on and embellishing the action, rather than driving it, dominated English opera, but even they were often 'pruned to their briefest, most melodic moments'. 99 Similarly, the operatic numbers included in the burlesque had relatively simple and easily memorable melodies. hey were also substantially curtailed, often to only a couple of phrases 95 Dideriksen, 'Repertory and Rivalry', 286-7. 96  from the original number. For example, only the irst two phrases of Lucrezia's aria 'Com'è bello' were used. he more complicated, virtuosic sections of the aria were not included. he same is true of the treatment of the interpolated 'Guerra, guerra!' from Norma. he introductory dialogue between the soloist and chorus and the recitative were excised, and only the most memorable part of the chorus (the eight-bar phrase from the Allegro feroce) was retained. Lucrezia Borgia! also included some English opera. his strongly suggests that the imagined audience was middle class, even if in reality it may have been more diverse; English opera had never won the approval of the aristocracy, but its use of the English language and its simple, strophic songs were enjoyed by the bourgeoisie. 100 Indeed, George Biddlecombe has found that advertisements in opera librettos at theatres ofering English opera and English adaptations of Continental opera were 'aimed at a range of middle-class families, from those whose incomes might direct them towards ready-made clothes rather than the more expensive hand-made dresses and suits, to others who could enjoy more expensive luxuries, such as imported wines, and the services of eminent doctors'. 101 'Take this cup of sparkling wine', from William Vincent Wallace's Lurline, would have been an apposite choice for a predominantly middle-class audience. Lurline was currently enjoying a successful irst run at Covent Garden as part of an English Opera season and received much press attention across conservative and liberal newspapers, all of which attested to its popular and critical success. 102 'Take this cup of sparkling wine' was one of the opera's most popular numbers and was encored in February performances. 103 Clearly the arranger intended to capitalize on current operatic hits.
Certainly, Lucrezia Borgia! did contain some numbers from popular genres, including some ballads (the great bourgeois drawing-room favourite Michael William Balfe was represented with his 'Glorious Vintage of Champagne' from Satanella), minstrel songs and music-hall songs. Importantly, the pairings of opera and popular music in Lucrezia Borgia!, rather than questioning cultural hierarchies, seem to have been made to reduce potential incongruity. For example, the burlesque included a clever transition from 'Com'è bello' from the original opera into Stephen Foster's parlour song 'Come where my love lies dreaming'. his transition does not seem to have been efected in order to appeal to the lower orders of the audience. Indeed, the song's style has been compared to Italian opera. 104 Susan Key argues that Foster's sentimental songs 'occupied a place deined by neither the "popular" nor [the] "elite" song'. 105 Such parlour ballads were performed by the middle classes, and their subject matter took a bourgeois stance. 106 As such, parlour ballads were intimately associated with bourgeois respectability. he discerning listener may have enjoyed the two numbers' similarities: their melodic arch, lyrical style and mood of bitter-sweet sentimentality. he lyrics to 'Come where my love lies dreaming' also mirror the subject matter of 'Com'è bello': gazing at a loved one while they sleep. he two pieces juxtaposed in this instance maintained consistency of style and meaning.
It is also important to consider the inluence of the arrangements on how popular music in burlesques would have been received. One reviewer found that the arranger, a Mr Kingsbury, had created stylistic consistency between the diferent types of music included: he burlesque abounds with well-written parodies, the music to which has been arranged and composed by Mr. Kingsbury, and certainly few works of this class can boast of a better selection. Bearing in mind that the piece is a travestie upon an opera, Mr. Kingsbury has in the most artistic manner given an operatic complexion to the music, and the burlesque is full of concerted pieces and choruses which are attractive in themselves. 107 Unfortunately no score exists for this burlesque, but these comments suggest that Kingsbury's arrangements added reinement to the popular and minstrel tunes. he phrase 'operatic complexion' suggests that he may have smoothed out stylistic contrasts with the operatic numbers, perhaps through alterations of tempo and scoring, through writing orchestral rather than banjo or piano accompaniments, and through creating sustained, lyrical legato lines. Such arrangements were common in British minstrel performances at the time anyway. In Britain, minstrel troupes stressed the wholesomeness and respectability of their shows in order to court the bourgeoisie, in contrast to their American counterparts who were popular with the urban working classes. 108 Minstrel shows were associated with reinement, far more so than music hall, for example. 109 Studies of minstrelsy lack speciicity in deining audiences. Nonetheless, Michael Pickering's work on British minstrelsy highlights the middle-class elements of minstrel shows. While Pickering acknowledges the cross-class appeal of the genre, he focuses on its development towards greater reinement. He also mentions the 'bourgeois values' evident in minstrel-song lyrics. He emphasizes that minstrelsy was accessible in a range of venues, which would suggest that the cross-class appeal was due to the lexibility of the shows. 110 Indeed, he argues that there were diferent 'strains of minstrelsy', which were socially distinct from one another and appealed to diferent sectors of society. 111 It is highly likely that the majority of the St James's heatre audience would have attended the genteel, bourgeois variety of minstrel shows, as troupes performed regularly at the theatre in the 1840s and 1850s. 112 From the 1840s such minstrel shows ofered musical accompaniments of harmonic complexity and a heterogeneous mixture of music, and often ended with an opera burlesque. 113 Troupes also put greater emphasis on sentimentalism and gained a reputation for 'wholesome family entertainment'. 114 he minstrel shows at the St James's heatre emphasized 'elegance, reinement, and grand-scale display'. 115 It is unlikely, therefore, that the inclusion of minstrel songs in burlesque encouraged greater audience diversity, as there was actually an overlap between opera's audiences and those of minstrelsy. Indeed, expensive sheetmusic prices suggest that minstrel songs were performed in middle-and upper-class homes. 116 he trends in minstrel performances in Britain at the time, and at the St James's heatre in particular, provide further evidence that the minstrel songs (and any other popular songs) included in the production were given in a reined arrangement. Orchestral arrangements would reduce any sense of deliberate disjunction between opera and minstrelsy, but equally minstrelsy may not have been considered a 'low' genre in this context anyway.
Lucrezia Borgia! had been transformed into a play with a series of tunes popular with the bourgeoisie and memorable operatic excerpts. he treatment of Italian opera in the burlesque ofered an accessible style of opera production that had been popular with the middle classes before the more recent interest in idelity to the score. Burlesque remained free from the constraints of more 'serious' opera productions, retaining the ability to satisfy audiences' tastes for Italian opera's 'greatest hits' without requiring the stamina needed to attend a sustained performance. Unfortunately, the gap between this imagined audience, who enjoyed reined minstrelsy and English and Italian opera (at least, its greatest hits in adaptation and translation), and the reality of the theatre's current audience was quite large. he writer and arranger had not responded to the theatre's current state of transition. A reviewer drew attention to this: In selecting the opera of Lucrezia Borgia as a subject for burlesque, Mr. Leicester Buckingham has not been particularly happy, as the lyric work is not suiciently well known to the habitués of those great supports of a theatre, the pit and gallery, to enable them to appreciate the travestie; consequently, much of the point and fun passes unappreciated. 117 he reviewer went on to suggest that with some revision the production would be 'specially acceptable to the occupants of the stalls and boxes'. 118 Clearly, Buckingham and Kingsbury had not considered Chatterton's recent strategy of trying to attract a new audience with lower prices and accessible repertoire and had planned the production with only a small sector of the actual audience in mind. he stylistic uniformity of the music and the close relationship between the burlesque and the original opera prevented it from being a commercial success; its consumer market was too narrow. Burlesques later in the decade retained this focus on the bourgeois market, but they became more commercially savvy and relied less on the audience's prior knowledge of opera.
Commercial variety: Little Don Giovanni at the Prince of Wales's heatre Little Don Giovanni was performed at the Prince of Wales's heatre on 21 December 1865. he date is signiicant because the theatre had recently reopened under the new management of Marie Wilton following extensive refurbishment. Before this time, the theatre had been called the Queen's heatre. An examination of playbills shows that in the 1850s the Queen's heatre tended to show pantomime and popular sensational melodrama about supernatural themes, exotic subjects and murder, such as Zarah the Gypsy Girl, performed on 20 June 1855. 119 he repertoire at the Queen's drew the attention of the Examiner of Plays, W. B. Donne, who objected to the sensational themes of crime and murder displayed in melodramas like Zarah and also criticized the poor ventilation of the theatre, calling it a 'dust hole'. 120 Ticket prices around this time were low. In 1855 admittance to the pit cost 6d. and the most expensive seats were the boxes at 2s. 6d. 121 he theatre was catering for a local working-class and lower-middle-class audience.
Davis and Emeljanow have argued that the transformation of the Queen's heatre did not occur overnight, and had actually begun before Wilton's involvement. 122 Either way, at the time of the Little Don Giovanni production the Prince of Wales's was known as a fashionable and respectable theatre. he reopening was commented on in the press, reviews noting the high ticket prices, the opulent décor and the fashionable audience: he most stirring event of the season came of on Saturday. We allude to the opening, by Mr Byron and Miss Marie Wilton, of the little theatre in Tottenham street, under the appellation of 'he Prince of Wales's' [ … ]. For the last twenty-six years it has been under the management of Mr C James, a scenic artist, who now has called in to his aid Mr Byron and Miss Wilton. he experiment is likely to answer well. he doors were literally besieged, and admission was scarcely possible. he prices are, however, on an aristocratic scale, and many carriages were among the crowd assembled at the doors. he interior of the house has been entirely reconstructed and richly decorated. 123 Reporters admired the new interior design, describing the white and gold trellis on the boxes, the gold stars on the ceiling, the white enamelled scroll and the Prince of Wales's feathers framing the proscenium arch, the ornamental stand of lowers on each side of the arch and the comfortable cushioned seating of the stalls and boxes. 124 Such attention to decoration was important in achieving middle-class respectability; Hugh Maguire has argued that the interior décor of West End theatres in the second half of the century mirrored the interior of middle-class homes, ofering intimacy, comfort and respectability. 125 he new ornately decorated theatre attracted a new type of audience. Play-goers began to wear evening dress, and royalty, including the Prince of Wales himself, occasionally attended. he Little Don Giovanni première took place eight months after the reopening. he majority of the audience would have consisted of the professional middle class, including writers, surgeons, politicians and lawyers. 126 Some of the old Queen's audience would still have attended, but many of them dispersed across the West End. 127 Ticket prices, described as 'aristocratic' in the press, were now signiicantly higher than in the days of the Queen's heatre, ranging from 6d. to £2 2s. (see Table 2, column 3).
We have seen that the timing of the Little Don Giovanni production also coincided with a period of renewed conidence in the theatre, with new theatres being built 122  across the West End. he Prince of Wales's management capitalized on the growing reputation of the West End as a tourist destination, using a number of strategies to commercialize their burlesque productions. Wilton and her husband, Squire Bancroft, cultivated their celebrity and were the subjects of newspaper columns. 128 Wilton was a burlesque actress as well as manageress, and she cast herself in the title role of Little Don Giovanni. 129 Her involvement was noted in the press, helping to puf the performances.
West End retailers and theatre managers alike believed that shoppers and audiences had a heightened taste for the spectacular and the visual. 130 he Little Don Giovanni burlesque capitalized on this commercial demand for theatrical spectacle. 131 he production involved several complicated scene changes from exotic Spain to familiar London, using common strategies of commercial theatre of the time to attract tourists through 'airming the accessibility of a diferent world or celebrating the materiality of the familiar world'. 132 he spectacular scenery was frequently commented upon in press reviews, which admired how the audience was 'suddenly brought before a charming picture of a Spanish Vineyard, by Sunset, which so delighted the audience that a general summons called the clever artist, Mr Charles S James, before them'. 133 he inal scene was emphasized on the playbill and involved a transformation from Leicester Square to the 'Winter Garden of the Christmas Fairies'. his was highly praised in reviews, which enthused that 'the transformation scene of a most magniicent character takes place, brilliantly illuminated with the magnesium and other lights, producing a wonderful stage efect'. 134 he producer and scene painter paid particular attention to scenery, painting and efects, having learnt from the longstanding enthusiasm of tourists for exotica, technology and spectacle which had reached new heights at the 1851 Great Exhibition. he use of magnesium to create special efects would have been unusual at the time, further suggesting that James intended to provide his audience with novelties in technology. 135 he scene with the statue of the Commendatore was set in a square that put reviewers in mind of a Spanish square and London's own Leicester Square simultaneously. his mingling of Spain and London coupled with the transformation into the fairy garden gave audiences a spectacle that rendered the familiar exotic and magical, and that also gave the burlesque a pantomime feel that was appropriate for the festive season.
he Prince of Wales's burlesque producers were also mindful of making their musical choices commercially appealing. Given that Don Giovanni was a favourite of middleclass audiences, 136 we might expect the burlesque to retain a considerable amount of music from the original opera. Some of the original music was incorporated, but the overall programme suggests that the management was more interested in creating variety than in capitalizing on Mozart's popularity. his mirrored strategies of large department stores, such as William Whiteley's Universal Provider, which ofered diverse commodities and services in order to cater to a new heterogeneous, mass public that was nonetheless essentially middle class. 137 Similarly, the music in Little Don Giovanni included a diverse mixture of operatic music, parlour songs, traditional songs, minstrel songs and music-hall songs (see again Table 3). he production was a great success, prompting many favourable reviews, a long run and even the patronage of the Prince of Wales at one of the performances. 138 he management understood that its middle-class audience consisted of a luid, ambiguous, heterogeneous group of people. he emphasis on variety created a result closer to ballad opera than to the musical selections of Lucrezia Borgia!.
he bourgeois audience may have been heterogeneous, but some pastimes, particularly domestic music-making, were popular across the middle classes. he arranger of the burlesque's music capitalized on the bourgeois taste for commercial stand-alone ballads that could be bought and played at home. Drawing-room ballads were particularly popular with middle-class women who were wealthy enough to have servants to care for their houses and children. Consequently, they had leisure time to devote to singing and playing the piano. 139 he music in the burlesque drew on the expectation that its audiences would own a piano. Indeed, ownership of a piano cut across middle-class society, whether a family's income fell towards the lower or higher end of the spectrum, as virtually every respectable family owned a piano by the 1870s. 140 It symbolized 'respectability, achievement and status'. 141 Piano ownership became increasingly possible across the middle classes as wages and living standards rose in the second half of the century and pianos in a range of prices became available. Some working-class people, such as respectable artisans, were able to hire pianos on credit, but the practice was disapproved by the higher orders out of snobbery and distrust of the system. he majority of the musical numbers listed in Tables 1, 3 and 4 could be purchased as sheet music. Don Giovanni ofered the greatest mixture of genres. Tellingly, these genres represented the diverse sources from which bourgeois Victorian drawing-room and parlour ballads were drawn. 142 Reviews suggest that the Prince of Wales's management had found a commercially viable musical format (which they repeated in other burlesques); a reviewer for Bell's Life in London and Sporting Chronicle enthused about 'the selected music of that pattern which is so popular nowa-days'. 143 he key was variety, but variety within bourgeois limits.
As in Lucrezia Borgia!, the popular genres were 'bourgeoisiied'. he minstrel songs chosen were already irm favourites which the bourgeoisie would sing in their own homes. For example, Little Don Giovanni included a 'Quintette' entitled 'Early in the Morning' -an adaptation of the minstrel song 'So Early in de Morning'. his song was published in an expensive collection (priced 2s.) with the title Popular Plantation Songs, which was aimed at a wealthy, genteel market. 144 We know that the meanings and functions of minstrel songs, even the same song, could change quite considerably depending on the setting in which it was performed and the particular arrangement. (Indeed, 'So Early in de Morning' was also a favourite of working-class singers and labourers.) he meanings of the song in this case were contingent on its performance context alongside opera and drawing-room ballads, shorn of dialect, provided with new lyrics and performed in a bourgeois theatre, probably to an orchestral accompaniment. he middle-class familiarity with minstrel music probably meant that any interpolations had long lost their subversive efects. 145 Music hall was another question. Dagmar Höher has shown that before 1890 the vast majority of London music halls were frequented by working-class and lower-140 See Cyril Ehrlich, he Piano: A History (London, 1976), 92-8. 141 Ibid., 97. Social and economic factors converged to make the piano a desirable and afordable commodity for every respectable home. 142 For an overview of the genres that were performed in the drawing room, see Scott middle-class audiences. 146 he traditional narrative of music hall's development describes a transition towards greater respectability and a more middle-class audience. 1890 is given as a key date from which music-hall owners and managers directly targeted the middle classes by trying to clean up the halls. hey ofered respectable entertainment, policed audience behaviour and began to distance music hall from its traditional links to tavern culture, aligning it more closely with the theatre. However, Höher has argued that even then bourgeois attitudes were conlicted and there were still many anti-music-hall campaigns. 147 Middle-class audiences may have enjoyed blackface minstrelsy, but (certainly in the 1860s) they were far less accepting of music hall. hey objected to its adverse efects on working-class morals, its lack of respect for middle-class values of temperance and hard work, and the apparent tolerance of prostitutes in the halls. 148 Mid-Victorian burlesques occasionally included music-hall songs in their programmes, but even then they were far outnumbered by other genres. Lucrezia Borgia! included only two music-hall songs, Little Don Giovanni three and Robert the Devil none. he songs are by some of the most famous performers in musichall history: Sam Collins, Sam Cowell, George Leybourne and Arthur Lloyd. heir ubiquity meant that they would have been familiar even to those members of the audience who would not have wanted to be seen at a music hall. Interestingly, the music-hall songs in Little Don Giovanni were closely associated with the igure of the bufoon policeman who is set on catching Don Giovanni throughout the burlesque. 149 he sergeant irst appears dancing to Robert Glindon's 'Literary Dustman', lamenting that Don Giovanni has eluded him. Lloyd's 'I vowed I never would leave her' was also sung by the sergeant along with the peasants Masetto and Zerlina and a chorus of peasant girls. In these cases music hall helped to characterize lower-class characters, highlighting diference rather than placing 'high' and 'low' culture on a similar level. On another occasion, Cowell's 'Ratcatcher's Daughter' was heard outside a tavern in Lucrezia Borgia!. he interpolation of a music-hall song here serves simply to set the scene. All of this further suggests that although burlesque did incorporate popular music, it drew mostly on popular music that was respectable and compatible with middle-class tastes.
he Prince of Wales's heatre management also cleverly catered for diferences within the bourgeois relationship to opera. he listing of famous arias in this way positions Italian, the language of opera, as a nonsense. he arias are divorced from meaning and listed among 'A grand piano-forte' and 'Signor Harri-Boleno', a famous Victorian clown, suggesting that these 'foreignsounding' phrases are interchangeable with the aria titles. However, there were other members of the middle class who did attend opera and who saw knowledge of art traditionally associated with aristocratic tastes as a marker of respectability. hose of the audience who could recognize the titles of these arias and their origins in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Il trovatore, Linda di Chamounix, Lucrezia Borgia, Don Giovanni and Rigoletto would have felt self-congratulatory in their knowledge of a high-status cultural code, which they shared with others who also understood the references. 152 In this way, Little Don Giovanni appealed to diferent members of the heterogeneous middle-class audience, leaving the ambiguity of the middle-class self-deinition unchallenged. Tellingly, only the higher-class characters, Don Giovanni and Donna 150  he spacious private boxes, the ornate interior decoration and the elegant dress of the audience can be seen in an image of the Robert the Devil production (see Figure  1). 155  the audience to itself. 156 Gaiety prices were on a similar scale to those at the Prince of Wales's, except that it charged considerably higher prices for the pit and gallery (4s. and 1s. at the Gaiety, compared with 1s. 6d. and 6d. at the Prince of Wales's), suggesting that they were trying to discourage the lower echelons of society (see Table 2, columns 3-4). he manager of the Gaiety, John Hollingshead, apparently 'laboured under no delusion that he was there to elevate public taste and to educate'. 157 A reporter from Fun noticed that the Gaiety 'seems to secure the support of the tribe which 156 Jim Davis has examined the intersection between theatrical painting and public opinion, arguing that audiences 'realised that they too were part of the representation taking place within the theatrical space they inhabited'. See Davis, 'Spectatorship', 67. 157 Walter Macqueen Pope, Gaiety: heatre of Enchantment (London, 1949), 87. represents, if not intelligence, at least wealth'. 158 he choices made for the Robert the Devil production suggest that the Gaiety management irmly understood that its fairly homogeneous, upper-middle-class audience wanted luxury, spectacle, fashion and frivolity rather than serious, educational drama.
he irst full production of Robert le diable in London, which was advertised as 'authentic', took place in 1832 at the King's heatre. French operas at the time were routinely translated into English or Italian. Adaptations were often modiied along similar lines to Italian opera, cutting complex ensemble numbers, dramatic music and lengthy ballets. 159 To some extent, these trends can be seen in the way Robert the Devil was presented at the Gaiety heatre (see Table 4). he only music from the original opera to be included was the opening drinking chorus ('Versez à tasse pleine'). he most memorable melodic part of the chorus was adapted as a solo air. On the libretto and playbill the title of this number was given in Italian, conirming that members of the audience were most likely to be familiar with the piece in an Italian version. he opera's dramatic music, including the music to the famous ballet of the nuns, was cut. Instead, the simple, memorable and repetitive chorus 'A fosco cielo' from Bellini's La sonnambula took its place, perhaps relecting the trend to translate grand opera into an accessible Italianate form.
Generally, however, Robert the Devil bore little resemblance to Italian opera or grand opera. he musical choices were fairly homogeneous: most of the music came from operetta and much of it from Ofenbach. Unlike the management at the Prince of Wales's, that at the Gaiety did not try to appeal to a diverse range of tastes within a heterogeneous middle-class audience. he musical choices were part of a diferent commercial strategy: the theatre was carving out a particular niche for itself in cornering the popular French operetta market, regularly producing operetta throughout the year with Ofenbach a regular ixture. Interestingly, Gilbert's other burlesques written around the same time for other theatres, including Dr. Dulcamara or the Little Duck and the Great Quack (on Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore) for the St James's heatre in 1867 and La vivandière or True to the Corps (on Donizetti's La ille du régiment) for the Queen's heatre in 1868, contained a far greater variety of ballads, operatic music, minstrel music and operetta on similar lines to the Prince of Wales's model. Gilbert altered his approach for the speciic context of the Gaiety. In the manuscript of Robert the Devil submitted to the Examiner of Plays, many of the details of the music were missing, but suggestions have been pencilled in. 160 Table 4 for details). he suggested musical choices and the seeming interchangeability about where the chorus from La grande duchesse should occur suggest that the guiding principle in the musical choices was simply that the majority should come from French operetta.
he music was fresh: La belle Hélène had premièred in 1864 and had also recently appeared at the St James's heatre in 1867, L'oeil crevé premièred in 1867 and La grande duchesse and L'île de Tulipatan were even more recent, having premièred in Paris only a couple of months before the Robert the Devil production. 161 Musical choices, therefore, were based on the desire to advertise new, fashionable products which the bourgeoisie might like to consume. Tellingly, the playbill advertising Robert the Devil provided details of the music used in the performance, including the composer, the original works the pieces were from and the publishers who had granted permission to perform the songs. his practice was unique to the Gaiety and appears to have been a marketing tool to make it easy for audiences to purchase the music. 162 Publishers probably saw the Gaiety's burlesque productions as an excellent means of advertising new music to an eager bourgeois market. 163 Hollingshead catered for the fashionable, commercial tastes of his audience in several other ways. One strategy was to sell programmes printed on scented fans, satisfying the upper-middle-class desire for luxury commodities as a symbol of social standing. Later Gaiety programmes were printed on silk. 164 he programmes for the opening night of Robert the Devil also included adverts for luxury items, including beauty products, horticultural decorations 'for homes of taste', perfume and 'crests and initials embroidered or designed', suggesting that the audience included some of the nouveau riche aspiring to acquire aristocratic lineage. 165 Erika Rappaport has argued that West End productions were comparable to shop windows, displaying richly decorated sets, costumes and props, and acting as 161 For details of these premières, see Richard Traubner, Operetta: A heatrical History (London, 1984), 22-49. 162 Playbills advertising burlesques at other theatres contained an overview of the plot and scene changes, but contained no information about the music, other than crediting the arranger. At most burlesque performances patrons could buy programme booklets, which contained dialogue. Programme booklets included (often misspelt) titles of the musical numbers and so could function in a similar way, but they did not usually reference the composer, the original opera or the publisher. 163 Typical means used by publishers to advertise music included press reviews and soirées in which new ballads were showcased. See Scott, he Singing Bourgeoisie, 56-7. 164 An example can be found at the V&A. An image may be found at <http://collections.vam.ac.uk/ item/O132946/silk-programme-r-ward-sons> (accessed 23 February 2016). 165 Adverts from Robert the Devil Gaiety programme booklet, 21 December 1868, 'heatre Box: Gaiety 1868', V&A.
an extension of the fashionable shopping district of which they were part. 166 his certainly seems to be true of the Gaiety's Robert the Devil production, in which not only musical selections but also desirable objects and settings were displayed for consumer-spectators. he musical choices, the way they were presented, the elegant programmes, the advertising and the spectacle of the ornate theatre itself all aligned the Gaiety with the commercial pleasures associated with the West End, making the Gaiety's burlesque a natural extension of the day's shopping. 167 he non-operetta choices in Robert the Devil were drawn from opera and traditional airs and folk songs (the traditional items were not advertised on the programme). Music hall was conspicuous by its absence. his was not appropriate for Gaiety audiences. A music-hall song did appear in a burlesque at the Gaiety in 1885, but it was sneered at in the press. A review of Frank Burnand's Mazeppa describes the vulgar response of those in the pit and gallery to the incorporation of the popular music-hall song 'What cheer, Ria?': he object of the song was that delight of the lower orders -noise. he more the 'profanum vulgus' screams the merrier they become [ … ] such a din is heard as never before echoed within the walls of this solemn place of mirth [he Gaiety]. 168 he reviewer also expressed surprise that this 'democratic ditty' should be heard in the 'aristocratic' Gaiety. he reviewer inished the piece by speculating sarcastically that as 'What cheer, Ria?' had travelled as far as the Gaiety, it may continue climbing the social ladder and be introduced in aristocratic balls. he review suggests that members of the lower orders were in the audience, but it was not usually the Gaiety's policy to cater to their tastes. Music hall did not corroborate the Gaiety's identity, or indeed that of its audience. Overall, the musical choices at the Gaiety carefully constructed a fashionable, upper-middle-class audience. Any popular music programmed was not intended to disrupt the audience's sense of a cultural or social hierarchy. he fact that it did in the case of Mazeppa was precisely because music hall was so unusual at the Gaiety, strongly suggesting that cultural subversion was not typical of burlesque at this time and in this theatre. In the particular case of the Gaiety, the homogeneity of the music suggests that Hollingshead did not intend to expand his clientele, but rather was trying to attract a particular type of audience member: one who was wealthy and enjoyed luxury, fashion and frivolity. his article has put forward an unfamiliar image of burlesque. It has argued that mid-Victorian burlesque was a diferent beast from its counterpart earlier in the century; gone were the days of cutting satire, cultural subversion and challenges to social 166 Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure, 183-4. 167 Rappaport has argued that audiences associated theatre-going with shopping, rather than treating it as an isolated experience. See ibid., 183. 168 Unlabelled newspaper cutting dated 21 May 1885, 'heatre Box: Gaiety 1885', V&A (date added post hoc).
hierarchies. In the second half of the century burlesque became respectable, safe and thoroughly bourgeois. Nonetheless, researchers have been slow to distinguish between early and late nineteenth-century burlesques; they tend to project the tendencies of late Georgian and early Victorian burlesque onto burlesques from the mid-Victorian period, assuming that they continued to question cultural and social norms. he result is that burlesque has been divorced from the wider context of the commercial development of the West End and of popular music more generally, which was driven by the appetites of the bourgeoisie. By placing mid-Victorian burlesque in its broader theatrical and musical context, we gain a greater understanding of the impulses driving many of the musical choices and of the audiences at whom this music was aimed. Indeed, if we examine the musical juxtapositions of 'high' and 'low' music through a mid-Victorian rather than a modern-day prism, we begin to understand just how commercial, and just how far from incongruous or dissonant, the respectable musical pairings were. As the West End became a respectable site of mass consumerism and a fashionable centre of pleasure and entertainment through the 1860s, the minor theatres found new ways to appeal to their most important consumers: the bourgeoisie. his does not mean that burlesques were attended solely by the bourgeoisie, but this article has argued that writers, producers and musical arrangers imagined their audiences as middle class and deliberately courted this group. Nonetheless, the heterogeneity, ambiguity and luidity of this group, combined with the separate histories and aims of the theatres themselves, and the time the performances were given, led the theatres to adopt diferent strategies. his article has deliberately examined burlesques performed at three theatres within a similar geographical area, with seemingly comparable clienteles and within a narrow chronological period in order to illustrate the considerable diferences that can be found even within these relatively narrow parameters. Burlesque itself was a luid, hybrid genre, which made it a perfect vehicle to attract this audience. Each theatre capitalized on a diferent aspect of burlesque: at the St James's, Lucrezia Borgia! was similar to early Continental opera adaptation; at the Prince of Wales's, variety was key, and here burlesque was similar to ballad opera; while the Gaiety's burlesque was almost an operetta, catering to the tastes of its particular share of the bourgeois consumer group and capitalizing on the developed commercial strategies of the broader West End area.
Overall, mid-Victorian burlesques can shed light on how a group of people who are often the subject of historical enquiry, but are notoriously diicult to deine, were constructed by mid-Victorian theatre managers, and perhaps also how this group imagined themselves. he fact that burlesques were involved in consolidating identity and social boundaries in a time of lux shows that they did play an important social role, though not the one with which they have been associated. he image of the bourgeoisie that emerges from mid-Victorian burlesque is of a social group deined by broad commonalities, including respectability, commodity culture and domestic music-making, but with a conlicted relationship to opera, to which burlesque producers were sensitive. he ability of producers to understand and cater for consumer diferences allowed mid-Victorian burlesque to become an extension of a fashionable shopping district and an important part of the West End 'theatrical theme park'. 169 169 Davis and Emeljanow, Relecting the Audience, 173. ABSTRACT Current studies of burlesque position it as a subversive genre that questioned cultural and social hierarchies and spoke to diverse audiences. Central to this interpretation are burlesque's juxtapositions of high and low culture, particularly popular and operatic music. his article problematizes this view, proposing that mid-Victorian burlesques lost their satirical bite. Demonstrating little concern for the tastes or interests of the poorer or the most elite members of the audience, they speciically targeted the bourgeoisie. he article places three mid-Victorian burlesques in the wider context of the commercial development of the West End following the 1851 Great Exhibition. It proposes that this broader context, and not the genre's perceived social role, provides the key to understanding the impulses driving the musical choices. It argues that juxtapositions of 'high' and 'low' music were far from subversive; rather they were included for commercial reasons, ofering variety -but variety within strict bourgeois limits.