The Mountain Sylph

The Mountain Sylph is an opera in two acts by John Barnett to a libretto by Thomas James Thackeray, after Trilby, ou le lutin d'Argail by Charles Nodier. It was first produced in London at the Lyceum Theatre in 1834 with great success.

Often (mistakenly) cited as the first through-composed English opera of the 19th century, it was Barnett's only great success on the stage out of some 30 operas and operettas, and was perhaps the most effective work by an English composer in the style of Carl Maria von Weber. Rarely (if ever) performed in the last century, its plot was parodied by W. S. Gilbert in his libretto for the Savoy Opera Iolanthe (1882).

The story-line of The Mountain Sylph, based on Nodier's tale, had already been adapted in 1832 by the singer Adolphe Nourrit as the basis of the ballet La Sylphide, and it was probably the success of the ballet in Paris, where the cast included the famous ballerina, Marie Taglioni, which brought the subject to Barnett's attention. In any case, the opera more closely follows the story of the ballet than that of Nodier's story.

Before The Mountain Sylph, Barnett had mainly written comic operettas, incidental music and songs for plays, and burlesques and adaptations of popular foreign works, including the opera Robert le diable by his distant cousin Giacomo Meyerbeer. The Mountain Sylph owes its larger scale to a fortunate accident. As Barnett wrote in a note to the published score:

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