Storace, Stephen (John Seymour)

Jane Girdham

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.41410
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001

Updated in this version

updated, 31 January 2014

(b London, April 4, 1762; d London, 15 or March 16, 1796). English composer. His father, Stefano (later
Stephen) Storace was an Italian double bass player, who was working in Dublin in 1750, and in London
by 1758. His mother (née Elizabeth Trusler) was a daughter of the owner of Marylebone Gardens. After
learning the violin and harpsichord as a youth, he was sent to the S Onofrio Conservatory in Naples to
study composition. Thomas Jones, a painter who took him on sketching expeditions around Naples in
the late 1770s, indicated that Storace treated his studies lightheartedly. His parents and his younger
sister, Nancy Storace, visited him in late 1778, before the whole family travelled in Italy. By autumn
1779 he and his sister were performing in Florence, she singing, he playing second harpsichord at the
opera house. In Livorno they met the Irish tenor Michael Kelly, who became their friend and colleague
and whose memoirs include many anecdotes about the Storace family. Storace’s earliest known
composition, Orfeo negli elisi, a cantata for two voices (now lost), was from this time.

In the early 1780s Storace returned to England, where he tried to settle in both London and Bath. His
earliest published works were songs and chamber music from this period, but his later output was to
be mainly operatic. He made several trips to Vienna, where his sister was employed as a singer. His
two opere buffe, Gli sposi malcontenti (1785, Vienna) and Gli equivoci (1786, Vienna), were probably
commissioned through Nancy’s influence on Emperor Joseph II. Storace was in Vienna for the
premières of these two operas, in both of which his sister and Michael Kelly sang. The Storaces
became friends of Mozart and invited him to London, but this plan never came to fruition. Although
Storace was clearly influenced by Mozart, there is no evidence that he was Mozart’s pupil, as is
sometimes claimed. On 20 February 1787, a few days before he was due to return permanently to
London, Storace was briefly jailed for disorderly behaviour. He described the incident in a letter from
prison to J. Serres, a friend in London.

Back in London, both Stephen and Nancy Storace joined the Italian opera company at the King’s
Theatre. In 1787 they made their London operatic débuts in Paisiello's Gli schiavi per amore, he as
director. Storace’s Italian opera for London, La cameriera astuta, lasted for only a few performances.
In the same year he sued the publishers Longman & Broderip for printing his substitute aria ‘Care
donne che bramate’ without permission, and eventually won his case. In the summer of 1788 Storace
joined the Society of Musicians, sponsored by Samuel Arnold. On 23 August he married Mary Hall,
daughter of John Hall, historical engraver to the king. Their only surviving child, Brinsley John, died in
1807.

By the beginning of the 1788–9 season, Storace had moved to Drury Lane, where Thomas Linley (i), the
house composer and a family friend, seems to have happily delegated his responsibilities. (Storace
never officially became composer to the theatre because Linley, a part-owner, retained his title until his

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death only shortly before Storace’s.) For his first project, Storace worked with James Cobb, Linley’s
librettist, in using Dittersdorf’s Doktor und Apotheker as the basis for an afterpiece. In the following
season they followed that success with a full-length opera, The Haunted Tower.

For the rest of his career Storace composed almost entirely for the Drury Lane company, usually
collaborating with Cobb for mainpieces and with Prince Hoare for afterpieces. Storace and Hoare first
worked together on No Song, No Supper (1790). All of their afterpieces were first staged as benefits
for Storace’s principal singers – Nancy Storace and Michael Kelly, and their less distinguished
partners, John Bannister and Anna Maria Crouch – and subsequently adopted into the repertory of the
theatre. Storace derived his own income from sharing benefit nights with his librettists and by selling
the copyright of his music to publishers – normally his operas were published in vocal score as soon as
they were established as successes on stage.

Several of Storace’s works were composed for specific occasions. Poor Old Drury, a prelude with songs
by Storace, was produced when the Drury Lane company moved to the King’s Theatre in 1791. (They
were without their own theatre for almost three years while it was rebuilt.) In the 1792–3 and 1793–4
seasons Storace again directed Italian operas at the King’s Theatre, along with Michael Kelly. He wrote
his own serious English opera Dido, Queen of Carthage (1792) for performance by the Drury Lane
company there, but it was a failure. Another occasional work was the afterpiece The Glorious First of
June, staged in July 1794 to raise money for the dependents of sailors killed in Lord Howe’s victorious
battle against the French on 1 June.

Storace’s two early Viennese operas are typical opere buffe, and he thought well enough of them to
incorporate sections into his English works. In his earliest works for the Drury Lane company, he quite
blatantly set out to please the English audience, modelling his operas on those of Thomas Linley (i),
Shield and Arnold. He then gradually modified the model – a series of dramatically inessential musical
numbers alternating with spoken dialogue – towards a greater integration of drama and music,
especially in ensembles. This trend reached its height in The Pirates (1792) and The Cherokee (1794),
his last two completed mainpiece operas. With these he became the sole proponent of action finales on
the English stage. His operatic songs run the gamut from simple folklike strophic songs to bravura
numbers in complex forms. In most of his operas he followed the English tradition of using borrowed
numbers side by side with those he had composed himself. Most of his overtures are in one movement,
following the continental European model rather than the old three-movement overture retained by
other English composers.

Storace was taken ill in March 1796 during rehearsals for The Iron Chest and died a few days after its
première; his death has been attributed to gout. He was buried in St Marylebone parish church on 21
March, an event recorded in John Philip Kemble’s diary (GB-Lbl). Nancy Storace and possibly Michael
Kelly made his unfinished opera Mahmoud stageworthy by adding music from other sources. Prince
Hoare wrote a prologue in Storace’s memory for its première on 30 April, and on 11 May it was
performed as part of a benefit night for Storace’s widow and child. In 1797 Joseph Dale, who had been
Storace’s main publisher, brought out the The Iron Chest and Mahmoud together for their benefit.

When Storace died at the age of almost 34, his career in the English theatre had lasted less than eight
years. His innovations had little influence on his contemporaries and successors, who continued to
segregate drama and music. Although some of his operas remained popular for several decades, his
contribution to the history of English opera was small: while audiences accepted his tactfully
introduced innovations, other English composers rejected them in favour of the status quo.

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Works

Stage works
afterpieces and mainpieces are dialogue operas unless otherwise stated; librettos published unless
otherwise stated

LDL London, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane LKH London, King’s Theatre in the
Haymarket LLH London, Little Theatre in the Haymarket aft afterpiece a-s all-sung

A-
Gli sposi malcontenti (ob, a-s, 2, G. Brunati), Vienna, Burg, 1 June 1785, Wn , D-Dl
(2 copies), ov. pubd pf 4 hands

Gli equivoci (ob, a-s, 2, L. da Ponte, after W. Shakespeare: The Comedy of Errors),
A- US-
Vienna, Burg, 27 Dec 1786, Wn , D-Dl (2 copies), Wc ; ed. R. Platt as The
Comedy of Errors, MB (2007)

La cameriera astuta (ob, a-s, 2), LKH, 4 March 1788, ov. pubd in kbd arr., 2 arias and
qt pubd in full score (all London, 1788)

The Doctor and the Apothecary (aft, 2, J. Cobb, after G. Stephanie the younger), LDL,
25 Oct 1788, vs (London, 1788)

incl. music from Dittersdorf: Doktor und Apotheker

The Haunted Tower (mainpiece, 3, Cobb), LDL, 24 Nov 1789, vs (London, 1789)

No Song, No Supper (aft, 2, P. Hoare), LDL, 16 April 1790, GB-Lcm, vs (London,

1790)

ed. R. Fiske, MB, xvi (1959)

ii (1975)

The Siege of Belgrade (mainpiece, 3, Cobb, partly after Da Ponte: Una cosa rara),
LDL, 1 Jan 1791, vs (London, 1791)

incl. music from Martín y Soler: Una cosa rara

The Cave of Trophonius (aft, 2, Hoare), LDL, 3 May 1791, lib unpubd

Poor Old Drury (prelude with music, 1, Cobb), LKH, 22 Sept 1791, text unpubd

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 Dido, Queen of Carthage (mainpiece, a-s, 3, Hoare, after P. Metastasio: Didone
abbandonata), LKH, 23 May 1792

The Pirates (mainpiece, 3, Cobb), LKH, 21 Nov 1792, vs (London, 1792), lib unpubd;
rev. with new text, as Isidore de Merida, London, LDL, 29 Nov 1827

The Prize (aft, 2, Hoare), LLH, 11 March 1793, vs (London, 1793)

My Grandmother (aft, 2, Hoare), LLH, 16 Dec 1793, vs (London, 1794)

Lodoiska (aft, 3, J.P. Kemble, after J.E.B. Dejaure), LDL, 9 June 1794, vs (London,
1794)

incl. music from R. Kreutzer: Lodoiska and L. Cherubini: Lodoïska

The Glorious First of June (aft, 1, Cobb and others), LDL, 2 July 1794, vs (London,
1794), lib unpubd

The Cherokee (mainpiece, 3, Cobb), LDL, 20 Dec 1794, vs (London, 1795)

The Three and the Deuce (aft, 3, Hoare), LLH, 2 Sept 1795, vs (London, 1795)

The Iron Chest (mainpiece play with music, 3, G. Colman (ii), after W. Godwin: Caleb
Williams), LDL, 12 March 1796, vs (London, 1797)

Mahmoud (mainpiece, 3, Hoare), LDL, 30 April 1796, vs (London, 1797), lib unpubd;
music probably completed by N. Storace and M. Kelly

Other vocal works

Orfeo negli elisi (cant.), Lucca, 1781

8 Canzonetts, 1v, pf/harp acc. (c1782)

Ah se poro, recitative and rondo (?1782)

Ah! Delia, see the fatal hour (after Metastasio), ariette (c1785)

Care donne che bramate (Badini), aria for Paisiello's Il re Teodoro in Venezia, KT, 8
Dec 1787

US-
full score pubd, Wc *

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 Io non era, aria for Sarti's Le nozze di Dorina, KT, 26 Feb 1793

full score (1793)

Captivity, a Ballad supposed to be sung by the unfortunate Marie Antoinette during

her Imprisonment in the Temple (J. Dibden), 1v, ?str (1793)

Lamentation of Marie Antoinette … on the Morning of her Execution, 1v, str, bn

(1793)

Instrumental works

2 quintets, str, pf/hpd and sextet, fl, str, pf/hpd, op.2 (1784)

3 trios, D, C, E♭, vn, vc, pf, in Storace's Collection of Original Harpischord Music
(1787–9)

also pub separately

The favorite air in the Heiress … with variations and an introduction (c1790)

Six Easy and Progressive Sonatinas (1791)

Venus and Adonis (ballet, Noverre), KT, 26 Feb 1793

pf arr. (1793)

Bibliography
BDA

FiskeETM

LS

SartoriL

Obituaries, The Oracle (17 and 18 March 1796)

The Thespian Dictionary (London, 1802, 2/1805)

W. Bingley: Musical Biography (London, 1814, 2/1834)

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M. Kelly: Reminiscences (London, 1826, 2/1826/R1968 with introduction by A.H. King); ed. R.
Fiske (London, 1975)

‘Memoir of Stephen Storace’, The Harmonicon, 6 (1828), 1–3

W.T. Parke: Musical Memoirs (London, 1830)

‘Musical Biography No. X. Stephen Storace’, Musical World, 14 (1840), 212–15

T. Jones: Memoirs (London, 1951)

R. Graves: ‘The Comic Operas of Stephen Storace’, MT, 95 (1954), 530–32

R. Fiske: ‘The Operas of Stephen Storace’, PRMA, 86 (1959–60), 29–44

J.A. Anderson: The Viennese Operas of Stephen Storace (diss., Catholic U. of America, 1971)

F.C. Petty: Italian Opera in London 1760–1800 (Ann Arbor, 1980)

K. Geiringer and I. Geiringer: ‘Stephen and Nancy Storace in Vienna’, Essays on the Music of J.S.
Bach and Other Divers Subjects: a Tribute to Gerhard Herz, ed. R.L. Weaver (Louisville, KY,
1981), 235–44

M. Velimirović: ‘Beograd kot tema glasbenih Kompozicij [Belgrade as Subject of Musical

Compositions]’, Muzikološki Źbornik/Musicological Annual, 17/1 (1981), 147–64

J. Platoff: Music and Drama in the ‘opera buffa’ Finale: Mozart and his Contemporaries in
Vienna, 1781–1790 (diss., U. of Pennsylvania, 1984)

D. Hunter: ‘Music Copyright in Britain to 1800’, ML, 67 (1986), 269–82

C. Price: ‘Italian Opera and Arson in Late Eighteenth-Century London’, JAMS, 42 (1989), 55–107

C. Price, J. Milhous and R.D. Hume: Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London, i: The
King's Theatre Haymarket 1778–1791 (Oxford, 1995)

J. Girdham: ‘A Note on Stephen Storace and Michael Kelly’, ML, 76 (1995), 64–7

J. Girdham: English Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London: Stephen Storace at Drury Lane
(Oxford, 1997)

J. Milhous, G. Dideriksen and R.D. Hume: Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London, ii:
The Pantheon Opera and its Aftermath 1789-1795 (Oxford, 2001)

More on this topic

Storace, Stephen John Seymour (1762–1796), composer <http://oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/
ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-26590> in Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography <http://oxforddnb.com>

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 Storace, Stephen (opera) <http://oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/
9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000904844> in Oxford Music Online <http://
oxfordmusiconline.com>

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