Inkle and Yarico

A comic opera with music by Samuel Arnold and a libretto by George Colman the Younger.

First staged at the Haymarket Theatre in London, England in August 1787, going to 98 performances there. Hugely successful, it saw a total of 164 performances on London stages by 1800.

Though billed as a "comic opera", the story is tragic, one of the betrayal of love by Inkle, an English trader, who is shipwrecked in the West Indies, and survives with the help of Yarico, an Indian maiden. They fall in love, but he ultimately sells her into slavery to cover his losses and enable him to marry well. Actions which he justifies to the West Indian chieftain in the end.

Though the libretto has been lost, the music has survived.

Performance history in South Africa

11 September, 1824: Performed by the English Theatricals company in the African Theatre Cape Town , with The Spoiled Child (Bickerstaff) as afterpiece. It was done as a benefit for Mrs Black.