“Null’altra Musica è quì gradita che la nostra”? Cultural Politics, Anti-Catholic Anxiety, and the Italian Operatic Community in London in the 1720s

The importation of Italian opera and its success among polite society was a matter of considerable controversy in England in the early decades of the 18th century. The implications of this wide-ranging cultural phenomenon were discussed not only in purely musical or even aesthetic terms, but primarily in broader social, political, and even religious ones. The introduction into Britain of an alien element triggered a great deal of cultural anxiety. At that crucial period when the sense of British national identity was still in the making and was being defined by opposition to the French and southern Other(s),1 the introduction of a previously unknown form of thoroughly Italian entertainment was bound to provoke an upsurge of patriotism.