Edward Fitzball

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Edward Fitzball

Edward Fitzball (actually Edward Ball ; * 1793 in Burwell , Cambridgeshire , † October 27, 1873 in Chatham , Kent ) was a prolific English playwright and librettist . Because of his preference for gruesome subjects and Grand Guignol effects, he was also known as "The Terrible Fitzball".

Life

Edward Ball was born in Burwell and baptized on April 20, 1793. His father was a wealthy farmer and his mother (née Fitz) was also wealthy by inheritance from his first marriage. After attending the Albertus Parr Academy in Newmarket , Edward had to work in his father's farm at the age of 12, as his father's fortune had meanwhile been greatly reduced by his father's horse racing. In 1809, at the age of 16, he began an apprenticeship as a printer in Norwich , which he finished in 1812. On August 15, 1815, he married Adelaide Alexandria Dupius († 1850) in Norwich.

After being unsuccessful with a lyric magazine, he succeeded in 1817 in getting a first play on stage in Norwich. Encouraged by further success and the novelist Amelia Opie , he went to London in 1820, where he was able to accommodate a number of plays at the Surrey Theater in the following years , including adaptations of works by Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper . He changed his name to Fitzball in 1821 to avoid confusion with a songwriter of the same name.

He had great success above all with sea dramas with shower elements, which could be staged particularly effectively on effect stages such as the London Adelphi . In a staging of The Flying Dutchman there, voltaic columns were even used to let an electric “magic beam” jump out of the finger of the Flying Dutchman. In addition to the Surrey and Adelphi, he has staged plays in Covent Garden and Drury Lane .

Appearance of the ghost ship in The Flying Dutchman

He was also innovative in terms of stage technology: in Jonathan Bradford , a crime play, the stage showed a cross-section of four rooms in one scene, in which action was taking place simultaneously, which Fitzball enforced against the resistance of actors and theater management. In the aforementioned play The Flying Dutchman , Fitzball claims to have been the first to use a magic lantern on stage. In a particularly spectacular scene, he projected an image of the slowly growing ghost ship into the backdrop.

His last pieces were no longer successful. In 1863 he retired to Chatham, where he died and was buried 10 years later. His work is completely forgotten today. His two-volume autobiography, published in 1859, is still valued as a source for the theater life of the time.

Works

Pieces

  • Edwin (1817)
  • Bertha (1819)
  • The Ruffian Boy (1819)
  • Edda (1820)
  • Alonzo and Imogine (1821)
  • The Fortunes of Nigel (after Walter Scott; 1822)
  • The Innkeeper of Abbeville (1822)
  • Joan of Arc (1822)
  • Peveril of the Peak (after Walter Scott; 1823)
  • Waverley (after Walter Scott; 1824)
  • The Floating Beacon (1824)
  • The Pilot (after James Fenimore Cooper; 1825)
  • The Flying Dutchman (1827)
  • The Inchcape Bell (1828)
  • The Earthquake, or, The Specter of the Nile (Adelphi Theater, 1828)
  • The Red Rover (after James Fenimore Cooper; 1829)
  • Jonathan Bradford, or, The Murder at the Roadside Inn (1833)
  • Thalaba the Destroyer (after Robert Southey , Covent Garden, 1836)
  • La favorita (Libretto for the opera by Gaetano Donizetti , Drury Lane, 1843)
  • La figlia del reggimento (Libretto for the opera by Gaetano Donizetti , Drury Lane, 1843)
  • Maritana (Libretto to the opera by William Vincent Wallace , Drury Lane, 1845)
  • Azael (Drury Lane, 1851)
  • Nitocris (1855)
  • Robin Hood ( Astley's Amphitheater , 1860)
  • She Stoops to Conquer (Covent Garden, music by George Alexander Macfarren , 1864)

Autobiography

literature

  • Michael R. Booth: Fitzball, Edward (1793-1873). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, 2004
  • Frederick Burwick: "The Flying Dutchman" when it was funny. In: Daniel Fulda, Antje Roeben, Norbert Wichard (eds.): “Can't you be very serious while laughing?”: Languages ​​and games of laughter in literature . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2010, pp. 19–28
  • Larry Stephen Clifton: The terrible Fitzball: the melodramatist of the Macabre. Bowling Green 1993

Web links

Commons : Edward Fitzball  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to article in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . The year of birth is often given as 1792.
  2. ↑ Burwick: "The Flying Dutchman" when he was still funny. 2010, p. 23
personal data
SURNAME Fitzball, Edward
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ball, Edward; The Terrible Fitzball
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English theater poet
DATE OF BIRTH 1793
PLACE OF BIRTH Burwell
DATE OF DEATH October 27, 1873
Place of death Chatham (Kent)