Family Quarrels

Family Quarrels is a comic opera in three acts with a libretto by Thomas Dibdin, and music principally by William Reeve.

[2] Some historians have claimed that Jews in the audience objected to the reference in the song to "three Jewish whores"[6] or even that the performance was " a deliberate attempt [by Dibdin] to please the government...to deflect attention away from the hardship, high taxation and repression...in Britain during the French revolutionary wars".

[7][8] However the music historian David Conway has noted that there is no evidence for the latter claim, and that the descriptions in the song of Aaron's ladies is perfectly respectable.

Dibdin's autobiography, in a chapter entitled "And the Twelve Tribes Waxed Wroth", indicates that he included the song exactly in the hope of creating some sensational publicity.

[11] By the fourth performance, things had calmed down: Dibdin quotes the newspaper The British Press: It was reported...that many Jews of the lower class had formed themselves into a regular phalanx, and were to renew their opposition, under the direction of the ass, whose cruel brayings were so successfully exerted the first night.