Having started the process of restoring Charles Dibdin to his proper place in British musical and theatrical history with our Christmas Gambols album – a project now strongly supported by a new Oxford University Press volume – Retrospect Opera has recorded a second Dibdin disc with Simon Butteriss, this time bringing together three works linked by Shakespearean themes. Queen Mab is a cantata composed for David Garrick’s great ‘Jubilee’, a three-day celebration of Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1769. The Jubilee, our main work, is Garrick’s musical comedy derived from the same occasion: it was his greatest theatrical triumph, and one of the most successful works of eighteenth-century theatre. These two works are being released to mark their 250th anniversary in 2019, and they will be accompanied by Dibdin’s serenata Datchet Mead, or The Fairy Court (1797), again featuring Queen Mab, written to celebrate the marriage of Princess Charlotte, George III’s eldest daughter.