A Comic Opera in a Pastoral Setting
Written in 1768 by Isaac Bickerstaff with music by Charles Dibdin
Adapted for broadcasting by Ursula Branston
Music arranged by Alfred Reynolds
Dramatis Persona Diana Colleen Clifford
Orchestra led by Victor Olof and conducted by Jack Clarke
Production by William MacLurg
(Empire Programme)
Isaac 'Bickerstaff's pastoral comic opera, Lionel and Clarissa, was written in 1768 and produced at Covent Garden the same year with music by Charles Dibdin. Lionel and Clarissa is a typical late eighteenth-century piece. It obviously belongs to the world of She Stoops to Conquer and the comedies of Sheridan, and the characters-the earnest tutor who falls in love with the gentle heroine while teaching her astronomy, Colonel Oldboy, the sporting squire, and his foppish son-are all conceived in the convention of the period.
In adapting the piece for broadcasting, Ursula Branston has worked from the text used in Nigel Playfair 's production at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in 1925. Alfred Reynolds 's arrangement of Dibdin's music, made for that production, will also be used.