The tragedy Rinaldo and Armida by John Dennis with "musical entertainments" by John Eccles was performed in London at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre in 1698. A rich example of "dramatick opera," this collaboration of Dennis and Eccles continues the hybrid form of musical theater nurtured earlier by Purcell and Dryden, a form that would soon give way to the hegemony of Italian opera in England.

Rinaldo and Armida garnered wide-spread attention in its performance by Thomas Betterton's troup...