Rosamond (Clayton)

[1]: 103 Addison and Clayton both objected to the new practice of having parts of operas performed in London sung in Italian; they felt that the texts used should be examples of the finest literary English.

[6] This was the same cast as had performed Arsinoe, suggesting that Addison was seeking to introduce his English libretto to a company of singers who had already shown they could achieve great success.

[6] While Queen Elinor regains her husband's love by appealing to his sense of destiny, a comic subplot involves Sir Trusty and his wife Grideline, and the interplay between the two is similar to the ‘split-plot’ plays of John Dryden.

The conqueror's approach I hear.’ Rosamond herself dies in the second act and this loss is ‘not compensated by a single interesting event in the third.’[9] The production was a disaster and the opera closed after just three nights.

Clayton wrote music for a work called 'The Passion of Sappho, and Feast of Alexander’ that was performed at his house in York Buildings, but he appears never to have written again for a professional production.