H. Piccinni, . Galuppi, J. C. Pergolesi, and -. Bach, at the beginning of the play, the superiority of the genuine, 'life-like' sounds of England over the elaborate music that opera, as a genre, is supposed to be based on. Somewhat paradoxically, this pasticcio-opera seems to reject the very recipes it is made of. Similarly, the last song of the opera -a passage in which each character successively sings their final cue, each with a different type of music -also establishes a form of hierarchy between various musical genres and origins. The "lofty" protagonists, the socially promoted Tom and sweet Sophia, thus sing music composed by the opera seria composer Johann Adolph Hasse; Nancy and Nightingale -socially slightly lower in Fielding's novel -sing music by the English musician Samuel Arnold; while old Nightingale and Squire Western, the upholders of the solid, traditional values of English country life, are provided with an old, traditional English song

, I love a song, short or long, jolly jolly songsters

, British musical situation of the period, still torn by a strong opposition between the Italian party and a growing movement towards the development of a truly English genre of the comic opera. The operatic transposition, in its treatment of dichotomy between two types of musical origin, thus recycles some of the themes of Fielding's novel, including the discourse on music and sound

&. Fielding, His intention was clearly to "polish up" some of its rougher aspects, notably by "purging" some of the characters of their "coarseness and indelicacy" so as to make them "more amiable and interesting

R. Fiske, Oxford UP, 1973) attributes the compilation to both composers (see p.341), his Register of First Performances of English Operas, 1983.

J. Reed and T. Jones, A Comick Opera: as It is Perform'd at the Theatre-Royal in Covent Garden