Acquiescence and resistance in the comic operas of John O’Keeffe for the London stage

While modern scholarship explores issues of identity, subversion, satire, and colonialism in O’Keeffe’s musical works, it tends to overlook music and song. This is the basis for this dissertation’s main thesis that scholarly evaluations of O’Keeffe’s musical works should not overlook the interpretive role that music and song contribute to the drama.

The first argument to support this thesis is that the analysis of music and song in O’Keeffe’s musical works provides a critical lens through which subversive and empowering subtexts can be viewed. Eighteenth-century English theatre censorship means that musical accompaniments, which were not submitted to the Examiner of Plays, are open to interpretation. The second argument is that O’Keeffe is known to have played an active role in the compilation of borrowed musical material for his London works.