Kitty Clive, or The Fair Songster

Berta Joncus's brilliant new book . . . compels us to imagine London's rich musical scene through the eyes and voice of one of the century's most extraordinary performers, Kitty Clive (1711-1785). . . . Readers . . . will be fascinated by this beautifully written biography, full of intriguing anecdotes and astute cultural criticism, where backstage gossip on one page is followed by keen musical analysis on the next. Moreover, singers will discover an entirely new repertoire to explore, one that puts the music of Handel and his contemporaries into a much clearer focus. Clive is a heroine for all generations, and Berta Joncus is to be praised for letting us hear her voice so clearly today. -- Wendy Heller * EARLY MUSIC AMERICA *
[An] engrossing history...dubbed the 'songbird of Drury Lane', Clive performed an extraordinary range of musical styles to great acclaim...Joncus gives a fascinating account...painstakingly researched yet written in lively and dynamic prose. * BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE *
[A] welcome study...Joncus invites us to think harder about what was heard and how music and vocal delivery shaped audience responses. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *
An exhaustive study of Clive's character and work; her roles and songs; her rise and fall; her feminist ambitions...a monumental, worthy, many-sided and richly detailed monograph, providing a strong portrait of Clive as a distinguished actress-songster in Handel's times. * HANDEL NEWS *
Berta Joncus has masterfully described the career of singer-actress-playwright Catherine Clive, a neglected star of the eighteenth-century English and Irish theatres from a charismatic ingénue songstress into a plump, carping older woman. Beginning with the acknowledgement that Clive shaped her own public image, Joncus details this stunningly important career with a much-needed emphasis on theatrical music. This brilliant book highlights the triumphs and challenges facing a talented, determined woman in an age that regularly satirized the second sex. -- Felicity Nussbaum, Distinguished Research Professor, University of California, Los Angeles
[Kitty Clive] is a quite extraordinary story with many applications for the study of celebrity today - the construction of star power, what happens to powerful women as they age and lose attractiveness, how the intricacies of complex networks of obligation, reciprocity and expectation are navigated. More particularly, it is a must for readers with a special interest in English singers and repertoire of the 18th century. -- Lisa MacKinney * Limelight Magazine *
Kitty Clive...receives a thorough, scholarly investigation in this volume.... Joncus...has brought to vivid life a theatrical world at once remote and familiar, and a star who used and was abused by that same system. -- Judith Malafronte * Opera News *
Kitty Clive, or the Fair Songster is essential reading for anyone interested in the eighteenth-century London stage and the wider culture that it represented and that shaped it. A star is re-born. -- John Cunningham * Eighteen-Century Studies *