Theatre Career of Thomas Arne

Gilman, a Yale librarian, considers Arne's current musical reputation to be unjustly diminished compared with Handel's and aims to correct the imbalance. Certainly he makes a good case for Arne's importance. Arne was active in the theaters of London and Dublin in the mid-18th century, composing songs and English operas with varying degrees of success and interacting significantly with the London theatrical world, which included his wife (a singer), his sister (an actress), and such well-known figures as David Garrick and Charles Burney--and, less often, Handel. The chronology of Arne's activities is extremely thorough and well documented, covering his entire career. The factual material is dense and reads more easily covering short spans of time than as an overall narrative. Several books on Arne have already been published, but Gilman's is by far the most thorough. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty CHOICE