Inkle and Yarico

Inkle and Yarico is a comic opera first staged in London, England in August 1787, with music by Samuel Arnold and a libretto by George Colman the Younger.

Inkle, an English trader, is shipwrecked in the West Indies, and survives with the help of Yarico, an Indian maiden. They fall in love, but when Inkle returns to his civilization, he plans to sell Yarico into slavery to recover his financial losses while he marries a woman, Narcissa, who will give him the social standing he wants. In the end, Narcissa marries another, and Inkle remains with Yarico.

The supposedly true story first appeared in Richard Ligon's book A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes (1657).

Richard Steele's Spectator printed another version in March 1711, in which Yarico is a Native American, sold into slavery while bearing Inkle's child.

The opera was highly successful, performed 98 times at the Haymarket Theatre, and a total of 164 performances on London stages by 1800. One of the most famous actresses to play the part of Yarico was Elizabeth Satchell. There were also performances in Dublin (1787), Jamaica (1788), New York (1789), Philadelphia (1790), Calcutta (1791), Boston (1794), and Charleston (1794).

Inkle and Yarico only survives in vocal score.

In 1996, composer Roxanna Panufnik was commissioned by the Holders Opera Festival, Barbados, to recompose the opera for steel pan and modern symphony orchestra. The production premiered at the festival on 15 March 1997, featuring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with British soloist Rachel Hayward performing the solo pan part.

In 1997 Straydog Theatre, under the direction of Simon Godwin and the music direction of Peter Tregear, performed the work in the historic Cambridge Festival Theatre. Tregear reconstructed the score for the vocal and instrumental forces that Samuel Arnold had at his disposal at the Haymarket Theatre. The production was remounted for a season at the Battersea Arts Centre in 1998.

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