Annotation:Opera Hat (The)
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OPERA HAT, THE. AKA and see "Bang It Up," "Coco Bram," "Russian Dance." English, Country Dance Tune (2/4 time). G Major: D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. A country dance tune that appears in several early 19th century English musicians' music manuscript collections, including those of John Clare (1793–1864, Helpston, Northamptonshire), Thomas Sands (Lincolnshire, c. 1810), John Moore (1837–40, Shropshire), and William Calvert (Leyburn, Yorkshire, 1812). The tune is almost identical with "A Russian Dance," also found in the manuscripts of Moore, Calvert and Sands. The melody and instructions for "The Russian Dance; or, Opera Hat" were printed in George Willig's Collection of Popular Country Dances in Philadelphia in 1812, and the tune was printed in New York in 1814 by Edward Riley in his Flute Melodies vol. 1. The country dance is mentioned in Adam Waldie's "The Gurney Papers," published in The Select Circulating Library (1837, vol. 10, Part 2, p. 231):
...and into the house I came again, when to my horror I heard a sound certainly most unexpected by me at such a moment—that of the tuning of a fiddle in the drawing-room next to my wife's bedchamber. I stepped up the stairs, astounded at such a circumstance, and there beheld Mr. Kittington, the dancing-master, just in the act of beginning the then popular country dance of the "Opera Hat," that being fixed for the first practice of the before-breakfast lesson to the young ladies.
See also the 6/8 time "New Opera Hat," a different tune that has also appeared as "Opera Hat" in a few manuscripts.
Source for notated version: a c. 1837–1840 MS by Shropshire musician John Moore [Ashman].
Printed sources:
Ashman (Ironbridge Hornpipe), 1991; No. 13b, p. 2.
J. Ball (The Gentleman's Amusement Book 3), London, c. 1815; p. 36.
Riley (Flute Melodies, vol. 1), 1814; p. 62.
Sutherland (Macleod's Collection, vol. 1), c. 1815; p. 37.
Recorded sources: