Portrait of Henry Bishop by George Henry Harlow. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
English Dramatist Frederick Reynolds, engraving by George Thomas Doo (1826), after painting by John Raphael Smith. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
Henry R. Bishop was an English composer born in 1786 to a watchmaker and haberdasher. Bishop originally trained to be a jockey but soon found himself physically unsuited to the occupation. Bishop pivoted to music and studied harmony under Francesco Bianchi. Bishop would become musical director at Covent Garden in 1810, and would make his career as a composer of primarily vocal and operatic music. In his day, his reputation was sterling enough for some to dub him the “English Mozart.” He was a commanding force in English opera, so much so that he was able to keep the genre alive single handedly for a time. Today, his music is thought of as quite negligible, and he is mostly unknown to modern audiences. Bishop would provide music for the choruses of The Exile and would write three songs for another Mazzinghi production, The Wife of Two Husbands.
Frederick Reynolds was an English dramatist born in 1764. He was the grandson of a merchant in Trowbridge and would study law at the Middle Temple before abandoning the subject to pursue playwriting. He would publish nearly one hundred tragedies and comedies in his time, most of which focused on “modes and follies of the moment,” and thus never achieved long lasting claim or permanence within a canon. His work is not well known to modern audiences. Reynolds wrote the libretto to The Exile and to The Free Knights, another Mazzinghi opera.