The Padlock

The Padlock is a two-act 'afterpiece' opera by Charles Dibdin. The text was by Isaac Bickerstaffe. It debuted in 1768 at the Drury Lane Theatre in London, England, as a companion piece to The Earl of Warwick. It partnered other plays before a run of six performances in tandem with "The Fatal Discovery" by John Home. "The Padlock" was a success, largely due to Dibdin's portrayal of Mungo, a blackface caricature of a black servant from the West Indies. The company took the production to the United States the next year, where a portrayal by Lewis Hallam, Jr. as Mungo met with even greater accolades. The libretto was first published in London in 1768 (?) and in Dublin in 1775. The play remained in regular circulation in the U.S. as late as 1843. It was revived by the Old Vic Company in London and on tour in the UK in 1979 in a new orchestration by Don Fraser and played in a double-bill with Garrick's Miss In Her Teens. The role of Mungo was,again, played by a white actor. Opera Theatre of Chicago have recently revived the piece (2007?) where, it would seem, the role of Mungo was changed to that of an Irish servant.

Bickerstaffe's libretto, based on Miguel de Cervantes' El celoso estremeño (a work translated into English as The Jealous Husband; the title literally means "the jealous Extremaduran"), consists of normal dialogue with a few interludes of song. It tells the story of an old miser who keeps his fiancée behind the closed door of their home for fear that she will not be faithful to him (in Cervantes's version, the woman is his wife). The opera's title comes from the large padlock that the old man keeps on the cottage door.

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