The Restoration must have been a thrilling period for England's musicians. The King's musical household was re-formed, cathedral choirs were re-established, and playhouses re-opened. English music changed radically as women took to the stage for the first time, and as our year-long celebration of Purcell and Handel draws towards its conclusion we team up with Carolyn Sampson to celebrate the wonderful corpus of English baroque music for the female voice.

Opera did not gain popularity in London until the early eighteenth century; indeed, 'Dido & Aeneas' is almost unique among English theatre music of its time in being sung throughout. More typical of Restoration-period theatre is 'The Fairy Queen', a "Restoration spectacular" which meshed spoken word with elaborate music, complex stage machinery, fireworks and thrilling visual effects.

Opera fever took hold of Londoners in the first decade of the eighteenth century. Rinaldo, the first Italian-style opera written especially for the English stage, was premiered by a troop of Italian singers in 1711. In the decades which followed, countless starry continental sopranos and castrati travelled to London to perform in Handel's subsequent operas and oratorios.