Bologna

Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry

Source: Lady Theresa Lewis (ed.), Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry, from the year 1783 to 1852 (London: Longmans, Green, 1865), p. 51

Text: The serious opera is performed in a small theatre. In the new theatre we saw the tragedy of Tamerlane, but as the piece was not printed, I could not tell whether it had any resemblance to ours of the same name; what most delighted the people was a battle upon the stage, which lasted nearly a quarter of an hour with unremitted ardour, and concluded with the slaughter of eight or ten men left dead upon the stage. All Italian actors, I am told, are very bad, because dramatic performances are not the taste of the upper ranks, who relish and encourage nothing but the opera. These were called superlatively bad; they had much less action than I expected.

Comments: Mary Berry (1763-1852) was a British editor, letter writer and diarist, known for her close association with Horace Walpole. Her published journals and correspondence include many theatregoing references. This production of an unidentified Tamerlane play took place in Bologna on 11 November 1783.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust

Posted in 1780s, Italy, Theatre and tagged Bologna, Mary Berry on August 10, 2019 by urbanora. 1 Comment

Search for:

Theatregoing is an ongoing survey reproducing eyewitness testimony of seeing theatrical productions, from the sixteenth century to the present day.

Enter your email address to follow Theatregoing and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address:

Venues

Witnesses

John Quincy Adams – Maurice B. Adams – James Agate – Archibald Alison – William Allingham – Hans Christian Andersen – Matthew Arnold – Walter Benjamin – Arnold Bennett – Mary Berry – Laurence Binyon – Harry Blacker – James Boswell – Reginald Brett – William Wells Brown – Hablot Knight Browne – Orville Hickman Browning – Frances Burney – Aaron Burr – John Byng – Neville Cardus – Percival Frederick Chambers – William Rufus Chetwood – Colley Cibber – Thomas Coryat – Samuel Curwen – Richard Harding Davis – Charles Dickens – Leonard Digges – William Dodd – Robert Dodge – John Downes – William Seymour Edwards – T.S. Eliot – John Evelyn – Henry T. Finck – Richard Flecknoe – Violet May Flynn – Simon Forman – Margaret Fuller – Marguerite Gardiner – Edmund Gayton – Francis Gentleman – Kate Terry Gielgud – Mary Gladstone – Oliver Goldsmith – James Greenwood – Catherine Elizabeth Havens – William Hazlitt – Paul Hentzner – C.W. Heriot – Harold Hobson – Thomas Jefferson Hogg – Philip Hone – Horace – Jack Howison – Anna Brownell Jameson – Franz Kafka – Ryszard Kapuściński – Fanny Kemble – Harry Kessler – Mirza Abul Hassan Khan – Karl Kingsley Kitchen – Herbert Kubly – Charles A. Leale – Henry Leigh – George Henry Lewes – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg – E.V. Lucas – Eric Lugg – Micheál Mac Liammóir – John Manningham – John Marston – Westland Marston – Henry Matthews – Alice Meynell – Paul Morand – Hannah More – Karl Philipp Moritz – Henry Morley – Gouverneur Morris – Naser al-Din Shah Qajar – Paul Nash – Philipp von Neumann – Sylas Neville – Harriette Story Paige – William Osborn Payne – Henry Peacham – Elisabeth Pepys – Samuel Pepys – Thomas Platter – Channing Pollock – Guy Price – Sydney Race – Henry Reeve – John Rickman – Robert Roberts – Henry Crabb Robinson – C.H. Rolph – William Howard Russell – George Augustus Sala – Ignatius Sancho – Walter Scott – Mihail Sebastian – Frances Lady Shelley – Mary Shelley – Benjamin Silliman – Louis Simond – Robert Southey – Reginald Spurgeon – Sidney H. Stewart – Philip Stubbes – Jun’ichirō Tanizaki – Thomas Tegg – Robert Tofte – Wolfe Tone – Boris Uxkull – Queen Victoria – Baron Waldstein – Henry Wansey – Evelyn Waugh – Lupold von Wedel – Edward William Wifen – Orrin Sage Wightman – Ashton Rollins Willard – Henry Wotton – Xenophon – Edmund Yates –

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31