Dickens, Charles

(b Portsmouth, 7 Feb 1812; d Gad’s Hill, nr Rochester, 9 June 1870). English writer. He wrote the libretto for John Hullah’s ‘operatic burletta’ The Village Coquettes, produced at St James’s Theatre in December 1836, while his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, was appearing in monthly instalments. References to opera in his novels are infrequent, but he often attended performances at Covent Garden and Her Majesty’s Theatre, and in letters praised Mario, Grisi, Lind and Viardot (especially as Fidès in Meyerbeer’s Le prophète). In Paris he was moved to tears by a performance of Berlioz’s...

(b Portsmouth, 7 Feb 1812; d Gad’s Hill, nr Rochester, 9 June 1870). English writer. He wrote the libretto for John Hullah’s ‘operatic burletta’ The Village Coquettes, produced at St James’s Theatre in December 1836, while his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, was appearing in monthly instalments. References to opera in his novels are infrequent, but he often attended performances at Covent Garden and Her Majesty’s Theatre, and in letters praised Mario, Grisi, Lind and Viardot (especially as Fidès in Meyerbeer’s Le prophète). In Paris he was moved to tears by a performance of Berlioz’s version of Gluck’s Orfeo in November 1862 (with Viardot in the title role) and, a few months later, by Gounod’s Faust. As editor of the journals Household Words and, later, All the Year Round, he published articles about music from time to time, and in 1869 published in All the Year Round several attacks on Wagner, probably written by his friend Henry Fothergill Chorley.