EBENEZER Forrest's 1729 ballad opera Momus Turn'd Fabulist: Or, Vulcan's Wedding opens with a self-conscious conversation between actor and author:

The Gentleman – here, a loosely veiled stand-in for the author – repeats a common view on the power of myth in order to justify his opera's setting on Mount Olympus: that which is most fictional, ‘poetical’ or down-right imaginary can reveal society's most fundamental truths. For Augustan authors from John Gay to Jonathan Swift, no genre was more truthful than the fable. Consisting of imaginary, talking animals or stock deities, fables were pithy tales that conveyed moral lessons through allegory.

Forrest's opera is not only constructed of fables; it is itself a commentary on the fable genre. The lead character, Momus, the god of ridicule, is banned from speaking and is allowed only to communicate in the coded language of the fable. As Momus encounters gods and goddesses throughout the opera, he sings each of them a fable that reveals their very human flaws. Forrest combined the genre of ballad opera – constructed from popular tunes interspersed with spoken dialogue – with an ongoing concern for the fable as social commentary and, indeed, oblique conduit for conveying otherwise silenced critiques.

In an era when censorship was becoming increasingly stringent, writers often employed allegorical strategies similar to Forrest's to distance themselves from potentially offensive material while making their intentions clear enough to political sympathisers. Moreover, by obscuring authorship, they could attempt to prevent their publications from being banned. These conditions make the origins of Momus Turn'd Fabulist even more intriguing. Forrest based his opera on Louis Fuzelier's comedy Momus fabuliste, ou les noces de Vulcain, which premiered at the Comédie-Française in Paris to great acclaim in 1719. In re-working this French comedy for the London stage, Forrest translated the text and turned the spoken fables into sung ballads. Why would he turn to this particular French source and how did he approach the task of adaptation? Did he use ballads for similar ends as the original had used fables?