Edward Fitzball

Edward Fitzball (actually Edward Ball; * 1793 in Burwell, Cambridgeshire, † October 27, 1873 in Chatham, Kent) was a prolific English playwright and librettist. Because of his penchant for gruesome Grand Guignol effects subjects and he was also known as " The Terrible Fitzball ".

Life

Edward Ball was born in Burwell and baptized on 20 April 1793. His father was a wealthy farmer and his mother (nee Fitz ) was by inheritance from his first marriage also wealthy. After visiting the Albert Parr Academy in Newmarket Edward had been working 12 years in the agriculture of his father, the assets had become greatly reduced by paternal horse betting. 1809, at age 16, he began a printing apprenticeship in Norwich, which he finished in 1812. On August 15, 1815, he married Adelaide Alexandria Dupius († 1850) in Norwich.

After he had brought no success with a lyrical journal, succeeded him in 1817 to bring a first piece to the stage in Norwich. Encouraged by other successes and the novelist Amelia Opie, he went in 1820 to London, where he was able to accommodate a number of pieces on the first Surrey Theatre in the following years, including adaptations of works by Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper. He had changed in 1821 Fitzball to avoid confusion with the homonymous song writer his name.

He had great success especially with Seedramen with showers elements that could be set particularly effective in scene on stage effect as the London Adelphi. With a production of The Flying Dutchman there you even used voltaic columns to jump out of the fingers of the Flying Dutchman an electric "magic beam ". Except in Surrey and Adelphi he also brought in Covent Garden and Drury Lane pieces on the stage.

He was there regarding staging innovative: in Jonathan Bradford, a murder mystery, was the stage in a scene a cross-section of four rooms which expired simultaneously act, which was enforced by Fitzball against the resistance of actors and theater management. Have already mentioned in the play The Flying Dutchman wants to be the first Fitzball a magic lantern used on stage. In a particularly spectacular scene so he projected an image of appearing, slowly increasing ghost ship in the backdrop.

His last works were not more successful. In 1863 he retired to Chatham, where he died 10 years later and was buried. His work is completely forgotten today. His 1859 published two-volume autobiography is still valued as a source for the theater life of the time.

Works

  • Edwin (1817 )
  • Bertha (1819 )
  • The Ruffian Boy (1819 )
  • Edda (1820 )
  • Alonzo and Imogine (1821 )
  • The Fortunes of Nigel (after Walter Scott; 1822)
  • The Innkeeper of Abbeville (1822 )
  • Joan of Arc (1822 )
  • Peveril of the Peak ( after Walter Scott; 1823)
  • Waverley (after Walter Scott; 1824)
  • The Floating Beacon ( 1824)
  • The pilot ( by James Fenimore Cooper; 1825)
  • The Flying Dutchman (1827 )
  • The Inchcape Bell ( 1828)
  • The Red Rover ( by James Fenimore Cooper; 1829)
  • Thalaba the Destroyer ( by Robert Southey, Covent Garden, 1836)
  • La favorita ( libretto for the opera by Gaetano Donizetti, Drury Lane, 1843)
  • La figlia del Reggimento ( libretto for the opera by Gaetano Donizetti, Drury Lane, 1843)
  • Maritana ( libretto for the opera by William Vincent Wallace, Drury Lane, 1845)
  • Azael ( Drury Lane, 1851)
  • Nitocris (1855 )
  • Robin Hood ( Astley 's Amphitheatre, 1860)
  • She Stoops to Conquer ( Covent Garden, music by George Alexander Macfarren, 1864)
  • Thirty -five years of a dramatic author 's life. 2 vols, London 1859, digitized, digitized
Chatham (Kent) Newmarket (Suffolk) Adelphi Theatre Name Authority File
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