Henry Rowley Bishop (1787-1855)

Following quickly on its first publication, Walter Scott’s 1815 novel Guy Mannering was adapted for the lyric stage as an opera produced in London the following year, with a score ‘composed, selected, and arranged’ by Henry Bishop. Bishop’s overture is a simple but effective medley of traditional and popular Scottish tunes, most of which were later also sung in the opera itself. Like that to Lodoiska, the overture was frequently performed in early colonial Sydney by bands, and also by pianists and other instrumentalists at home, performing from piano sheet music editions such as that engraved and published in Sydney by Francis Ellard, pictured below.