Stephen John Seymour Storace (4 April 1762 – 19 March 1796) was an English composer of the Classical era, known primarily for his operas. His sister was the famous opera singer Nancy Storace.
He was born in London in the Parish of St Marylebone to an English mother and Italian father. Relatively little is known through direct records of his life, and most details are known second-hand through the memoirs of his contemporaries Michael Kelly, the actor John Bannister, and the oboist William Thomas Parke.
His father, Stefano Storace (b. Torre Annunziata, ca. 1725; d. London, ca. 1781), an Italian contrabassist and composer, taught him the violin so well that at ten years old he played successfully the most difficult music of the day. The composer's youth was spent entirely in the company of musicians, since his father (also a composer and arranger) was the Musical Director of Marylebone Gardens. Mistrusting the quality of musical education available in England, Stefano Storace sent his son to Italy to study, at the Conservatorio di Sant' Onofrio, Naples. Stephen neglected his musical studies in Italy, and went on painting expeditions with Thomas Jones. His interest in art may not have been entirely extinguished, however – unlike the works of any of his English contemporaries, the printed vocal scores of all his operas feature elaborate engravings of what are presumed to be the stage-designs, and it is suggested that these drawings were Stephen's own work. No other artist, at least, seems to have claimed credit for them. Towards the end of their studies, Stephen and Nancy first made the acquaintance of Michael Kelly, whom they encountered by chance in Livorno. Kelly was with English-speaking friends, and ventured an opinion (in English) as to whether the young person with Stephen was a boy or a girl. "The person is a she-animal" retorted an offended Nancy in English as the first remark in what would be a lifelong friendship with both the Storaces.
Kelly tells the story with an important difference. He was as thin as a rake, coming from Sicily to Livorno, and with a mass of fair hair, and he had not long ceased singing treble.
Nancy and Stephen, whom he did not know, stood together on the Livorno Mole, and Nancy said in English to her brother, 'Look at that girl dressed in boy's clothes." Kelly then astonished her by replying, also in English, 'You are mistaken, Miss; I am a very proper he animal, and quite at your service!'
Return to England; employment in Vienna: 1780–1787
Stephen Storace returned to England sometime between the years of 1780 and 1782, most likely to settle his father's affairs after his death in Naples, which probably happened around 1780–1781. Nancy, accompanied by her mother, Elizabeth, went to Vienna in January 1783. Nancy entered into an arranged marriage (most likely arranged by her mother) to the English violinist and composer John Fisher in March 1784. The marriage only lasted a few months. It is unclear how Stephen obtained his first commission to compose an Italian opera for the Viennese stage, but the commission was most likely obtained by Nancy sometime in the fall of 1784, with Stephen arriving in Vienna sometime in late December of that same year.
Stephen produced his first opera, Gli sposi malcontenti, at Vienna, on 1 June 1785. The premiere, however, was marred by the failure of his sister's voice. She was singing the prima buffa role and collapsed on-stage in mid-aria, causing the performance to be abandoned. Nancy was pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl a few weeks later. The child was given to a foundling home by Elizabeth Storace, who claimed that it belonged to Nancy's estranged husband, John Fisher, who had been banished by the Emperor some months earlier for beating Nancy. Elizabeth Storace claimed that they did not care if the child lived or died; the child died in the foundling home a month after she was born. Nancy's return to the stage four months later was marked by the performance of Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia, composed specially for the occasion by a trio of composers – Mozart, Salieri, and the unknown "Cornetti" (which may have been a pen-name for Stephen, Salieri, or even perhaps Emperor Joseph II). This rare example of a Mozart-Salieri collaboration was discovered only in 2016.
In Vienna, the Storaces knew Mozart very well. Nancy sang Susanna at the premiere of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, and Kelly sang Don Curzio. Stephen was regularly playing pool with Wolfgang. One interesting anecdote is that at one occasion in 1785 Haydn, Dittersdorf, Mozart and Wanhal played Storace's string quartet, Dittersdorf taking first violin, Haydn second violin, Mozart viola and Wanhal cello. The "English circle" in Vienna also included the composer Thomas Attwood.
Stephen produced a second opera in Vienna, Gli equivoci, founded on Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors.
There is no clear explanation why the Storaces abandoned Vienna at the height of their success there. The reasons are suggested to be more personal than professional. Certainly the Emperor spoke of her with great admiration, even using her abilities as an arbitrary unit of currency – "I'd not give you a Storace for it!". Quite possibly Nancy was under pressure from Elizabeth, who was not at all happy in Vienna, and wished to return to England with both of her children in tow. Nancy left Vienna in February 1787, along with her "entourage" of Michael Kelly, her brother, and Thomas Attwood. Buoyed-up by their success on the Viennese stage, the coach-party which left for London could not have imagined they would find themselves rejected and unwanted in London, where their names were quite forgotten after such a long absence. Stephen was remembered – if at all – as an infant prodigy violinist at Vauxhall Gardens, and found it very hard to secure paying work without the cherubic charm of youth behind him, and moreover as an unknown composer.
Both Nancy and Stephen imagined they might find work at the King's Theatre, which was – at that time – the home of the Royal Italian Opera, a troupe which enjoyed a Royal monopoly on the presentation of Italian opera, and in fact of any musical works which were through-composed without dialogue. Kelly succeeded in getting a few roles there (on the basis of his wider professional experience, knowing roles the King's Theatre already had in repertoire, and his legendary charm), but both Storaces found themselves excluded by the group of native Italian musicians already well-established there. Stephen too worked at the King's Theatre as music director for some operas, including his own La Cameriera Astuta, before moving in 1789 to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which at this time was under the management of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Sheridan's personal interest in the theatre had largely dried-up by this point in his career, and he was more interested in politics – his theatrical interests were primarily financial, and he had established a successful format of lavish musical spectaculars, more remarkable for their visual than musical content. To evade the Royal monopoly on opera at the King's Theatre, Sheridan presented a mixture of Singspiel-type works specially written in English in the ballad-opera style, with "English'd" versions of popular operas playing in continental Europe in which he saw some commercial opportunity. Stephen Storace's first job at Drury Lane was to make an "English" version of Dittersdorf's German Singspiel Doktor und Apotheker, which appeared in English as Doctor & Apothecary in 1787 in Storace's version. The work of making "English" versions was not just a question of translation – all complicated musical numbers (especially trios, quartets etc.) had to be "cut" to make them performable by English casts who were primarily pantomime comedians without any great musical talent. This also meant transposition of some numbers, making a fresh English text, cutting whole numbers and replacing them with dialogue, and sometimes inserting new comic songs and "patter-songs" which the public greatly enjoyed.