Henry Chorley

Henry Fothergill Chorley (15 December 1808 – 16 February 1872) was an English literary, painting and music critic, writer and editor.

On the other hand, he praises the efforts of Giulia Grisi, Mario and Michael Costa, together with a group of journalists (including himself), for successfully creating the Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden in 1847.

[1] He also wrote the well-received Memorials of Mrs. Hemans (1836), Handel Studies (1859), an annotated edition Mary Russell Mitford's letters (2 vols., 1872) and The National Music of the World (1882).

His works of fiction included Sketches of a Seaport Town (1834), a collection of stories, essays, and novellas related to Liverpool.

He wrote two novels, Roccabella (1859), under the pseudonym Paul Bell and dedicated to Elizabeth Barrett Browning,[4] and A Prodigy: a Tale of Music (1866).

Chorley, as reviewer, waited to make his comment until the final announced performance, of which he wrote that it was "seriously imperilled by a singular translation".

After the death of his brother, John Rutter Chorley (1806–1867), he inherited enough money to retire from the Athenaeum, although he continued to contribute articles for that paper and also for The Orchestra.

When Gounod lived in England during the early 1870s, he wrote a satirical character piece for piano that was intended to be a parody of Chorley's personality.

It greatly amused Gounod's English patron, Georgina Weldon, who described Chorley as having a "thin, sour, high-pitched sopranish voice" and moving like a "stuffed red-haired monkey.

It became popular as a concert piece,[12] and in the 1950s, its opening phrases became well known as the theme music for the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

[15] Fellow critic Charles Lewis Gruneisen wrote in the Athenaeum that Chorley's personality had impeded appreciation of his qualities.