Albion and Albanius

Albion and Albanius is an opera, closely resembling a French tragédie en musique, by Louis Grabu with an English libretto by John Dryden.

The words were written by Dryden in 1680. It was initially intended as a prologue to his opera King Arthur, which he explicitly states in the prologue to that opera. "But some intervening accidents having hitherto deferred the performance of the main design, I proposed to the actors to turn the intended prologue into an entertainment by itself, as you now see it, by adding two acts more to what I had already written." (Dryden's Preface)

The music was written in 1685. After the period of court mourning for the late King and many other delays, the sumptuous production (costing the company over £4000 to mount) had its premiere on Sunday, 3 June that same year at Dorset Garden Theatre, London. This was "a very unlucky day", observes Downes in Roscius Anglicanus, "being the day the Duke of Monmouth landed in the west: the nation being in a great consternation, it was performed but six times, which not answering half the charge they were at, involved the company very much in debt." This fiasco helps explain the rarity of operas in the 1680s, until Londoners had settled down after the Glorious Revolution of 1689. In addition, events of the five years of James's reign quickly rendered the adulatory allegory of Dryden's machinery no longer current.

Albion and Albanius is the first full-length English opera that still survives.

It was written as a tribute to King Charles II, and after his death was intended to apply to his successor James II.

...
Wikipedia