OPERA SINGERS OF THE PERIOD As there cannot be successful opera without opera singers, here are the names of a few who have gone down to history: Angelica Catalani, Giudittza Pasta, Henriette Sontag, Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient, Maria Garcia Malibran, Pauline Viardot Garcia, Henriette Nissen, Giulia Grisi, Jenny Lind, Caroline Carvalho, Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa, Zelia Trebelli, Pauline Lucca, and Adelina Patti, and Manuel Garcia, John Braham, Domenico Ronconi, Nicholas Levasseur, Joseph Tichatschek, Guiseppe Mario, Enrico Tamberlick, Theodor Wachtel, Charles Santley and John Sims Reeves. ENGLISH OPERA-BALLAD 18TH CENTURY Fifteen years after the period in which Purcell glorified English music, Handel went to England and gathered about him composers who wrote along the lines which he popularized. In addition to this, ballad-operas, part songs, “catches” (separate songs or ballads) were very popular. In London, there were comic plays made of strings of songs such as Gay’s _Beggar’s Opera_ which were sisters to _opera buffa_ in Italy, _opéra bouffe_ in France, and the _Singspiel_ in Germany. Forty-five of these ballad-operas were produced in 15 years. The arrangers of these amusing song-plays included the names of Dr. Pepusch, a German who lived in London; Henry Carey (1692–1743), famous as the composer of _Sally in our Alley_, _God Save the King_ (our _America_); and Thomas Arne (1710–1778) who wrote many masques, numerous ballad-operas, and set many of the Shakespeare lyrics and wrote many glees and ballads. Some of these part songs were very beautiful and somewhat like the madrigals of earlier days. Many of the church composers in their lighter moods wrote some of these ballad-operas, among them: Samuel Arnold, with his _Maid of the Mill_, a _pasticcio_, “Notable,” says Waldo Selden Pratt, “as the first native music drama, since Purcell”; William Jackson; Thomas Atwood and Charles Dibden who was so successful with his _Shepherd’s Artifice_ that he wrote seventy others, and thirty musical monologues, among which were _Sea Songs_. Some other well known men were Michael Arne, son of Dr. Thomas Arne with his _Fairy Tale_, _Almena_ and _Cymon_ from Garrick’s play of the same name; James Hook with some two thousand songs and twenty-five plays; William Shield, the viola player and song writer; Stephen Storace, clever violinist and the author of _The Haunted Tower_ and _Pirates_, and his sister Ann Storace, a singer. At this time there were two clubs, one called the “Catch Club” and another the “Glee Club,” and one also called “Madrigal Society,” and before 1800 we have a list of glee writers including the two Samuel Webbs, Sr. and Jr., Benjamin Cook and his son Robert, John Wall Callcott, a pupil of Haydn, who won many medals from the “Catch Club.”