John Frederick Lampe
Encyclopedia
John Frederick Lampe was a musician.

He was born in Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....

, but came to England in 1724 and played the bassoon
Bassoon
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...

 in opera houses. His wife, Isabella Lampe
Isabella Lampe
Isabella Lampe was an English operatic soprano and the wife of composer John Frederick Lampe...

, was sister-in-law to the composer Thomas Arne with whom Lampe collaborated on a number of concert seasons. John and Isabella's son, Charles John Frederick Lampe
Charles John Frederick Lampe
Charles John Frederick Lampe was an English composer and organist, and the son of composer John Frederick Lampe and the singer Isabella Lampe .-Biography:...

, was a successful organist and composer as well.

Like Arne, Lampe wrote operatic works in English in defiance of the vogue for Italian opera popularised by George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...

 and Nicola Porpora
Nicola Porpora
Nicola Porpora was an Italian composer of Baroque operas and teacher of singing, whose most famous singing student was the castrato Farinelli. One of his other students was composer Matteo Capranica.-Biography:Porpora was born in Naples...

. Lampe, along with Henry Carey
Henry Carey (writer)
Henry Carey was an English poet, dramatist and song-writer. He is remembered as an anti-Walpolean satirist and also as a patriot. Several of his melodies continue to be sung today, and he was widely praised in the generation after his death...

 and J. S. Smith, founded the short-lived English Opera Project. He became a friend of Charles Wesley
Charles Wesley
Charles Wesley was an English leader of the Methodist movement, son of Anglican clergyman and poet Samuel Wesley, the younger brother of Anglican clergyman John Wesley and Anglican clergyman Samuel Wesley , and father of musician Samuel Wesley, and grandfather of musician Samuel Sebastian Wesley...

, and wrote several tunes to accompany Wesley's hymns. His works for the stage include the mock operas Pyramus and Thisbe
Pyramus and Thisbe (Lampe)
Pyramus and Thisbe is a mock opera in one act by John Frederick Lampe to an anonymous libretto based on Richard Leveridge’s libretto of the same name after the play-within-a-play in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream which is in turn based the Greek myth Pyramus and Thisbe...

(1745) and The Dragon of Wantley (1734), which ran for 69 nights, a record for the time, surpassing The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...

. He was based for a time in Dublin and later in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

, where he died.

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