Announcing our first lecture of 2024, to be given at St Anne’s Soho (and zoomed online) on January 17th at 7.30pm. Booking details below – don’t miss it!

In the performance history of Allan Ramsay’s The Gentle Shepherd, adapting, condensing, and even performing single scenes and songs is a relatively common occurrence, and is one of the reasons why the pastoral comedy remained in the performance repertory long into late nineteenth century. Ramsay himself started this tradition, when he adapted the play into a ballad opera, demonstrating that the material could be changed to suit a different format, and that he, as the author, was open to such changes. The talk will showcase how The Gentle Shepherd emerged as one of the most celebrated and influential of eighteenth-century Scottish dramas and will show that the key to its success was its adaptability.

Brianna E. Robertson-Kirkland is a Lecturer in Historical Musicology at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and her most recent publications include Venanzio Rauzzini and the Birth of a New Style in English Singing Scandalous Lessons (2022) and Allan Ramsay’s The Tea Table Miscellany co-edited with Professor Murray Pittock (2023). She is the current BSECS-Georgian Papers Fellow for 2023, where she is investigating Dorothea Jordan, a prima donna who was also the known mistress of William IV.

Attending in person at St Anne’s Soho? Book here

Can’t come but would like to watch online? Register here