The Village Coquettes

MP3 Audio CD. Written in 1836, The Village Coquettes is a comic operetta in two acts. The play is one of Charles Dickens?s less known works. The original idea for the opera was very different from the final result. Dickens met John Pyke Hullah, a friend of his sister?s and student at the Royal Academy of Music. They talked about creating a light opera, with Dickens writing the text and Hullah the music. Their ideas were different at the beginning ? Hullah wanted to create an Italian piece, but Dickens was thinking about an English drama. What came out in the end was a comedy, written in English.

The play had a smooth and fast ride and was staged very soon after coming to life. Young Charles Dickens, aged 23, was sincerely complimented by light-opera tenor and theatre producer John Braham, and the play was scheduled.

The play is set in an English village, in the autumn of 1729. The text is lively and the verses are skillfully written. Dickens?s great talent can be anticipated even from the first pages.

The pastoral operetta depicts the life of a village, in the busy season of the fall. On this idyllic background, the characters start flirting with each other, giving rise to humorous situations. The reader will be easily captivated and kept interested until the very last lines.

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England, in February, 1812. He is considered one of the most prolific writers from the Victorian period. His works are still widely appreciated, due to the humor and satire that pervades them. His extraordinary power of observation makes novels like Great Expectations, David Copperfield, or The Adventures of Oliver Twist give us an accurate image of the British society in Dickens?s time. He died in June 1870 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.