The Mapleson Memoirs 1848 - 1888.

London Remington & Co..., 1888. FIRST EDITION. 2 volumes. 8vo, 213 x 130 mms., pp. xi [xii blank], 327 [328 blank]; vii [viii blank], 319 [320 advert], including half title in each volume, portrait in volume 1, contemporary half sheepskin, marbled boards, gilt title on spines. A very good set. The opera manager James Henry Mapleson (1830 - 1901) began his career as an opera singer, but his one and only performance in London in Auber's Masaniello ended that aspiration. His career was checkered, but, as ODNB notes, "In 1856 Mapleson opened a concert and dramatic agency, using his Italian contacts and his knowledge of the language to supply artists for Covent Garden and Her Majesty's, and in 1858 was engaged by E. T. Smith, a jack-of-all-trades entrepreneur and lessee of Drury Lane, to manage a season of Italian opera there. Three years later Mapleson took the Lyceum Theatre for a season of his own, and then moved on to Her Majesty's, where he remained until the theatre burnt down on 6 December 1867. These were his most prosperous and significant years as an opera impresario." Bernard Shaw in London Music described these memoirs as entertaining, but unreliable, covering "a period of hopeless decay" exhibiting "want of life, purpose, sincerity and concerted artistic effort."