Kelly began the production of his long series of musical settings of plays (ib. ii. 361). One of the most notable was Sheridan's ‘Pizarro,’ first performed on 24 May 1799. ‘Pizarro,’ he says (ib. ii. 159), ‘was advertised, and every box in the house taken, before the fourth act of the play was begun; nor had I one single word of the poetry for which I was to compose the music.’ Sheridan at last came to dinner, and managed to suggest his ideas to Kelly by the help of inarticulate ‘rumbling noises.’ Kelly employed a poor author to write words for the choruses, but the actors did not have their speeches for the fifth act until the fourth act was being performed in public. The play was a great success. Colman's ‘Bluebeard’ and ‘Love Laughs at Locksmiths,’ Kemble's ‘Deaf and Dumb,’ and Coleridge's ‘Remorse’ were greater successes than ‘Monk’ Lewis's plays and Moore's ‘Gipsey Prince’ (Haymarket, 24 July 1801). About the latter Moore wrote to his mother: ‘Poor Mick is rather an imposer than a composer. He cannot mark the time in writing three bars of music; his understrappers, however, do all that for him, and he has the knack of pleasing the many. He has compiled the “Gipsey Prince” exceedingly well, and I have strong hopes of its success.’ Kelly, in setting to music Colman's adaptation of ‘Gay Deceivers,’ observed that the English taste in music ‘required more cayenne than that of any other nation in the world.’ Yet whatever is original in Kelly's own work cannot be said to possess this quality. It was doubtless apparent in his acting and singing, of which the Earl of Mount-Edgcumbe wrote: ‘Though a good musician and not a bad singer … Kelly had retained or regained so much of the English vulgarity of manner that he was never greatly liked at the King's Theatre.’ His voice was said to be wanting in sweetness and melody; and his ‘rather effeminate features allowed of little expression; yet he was a good actor’ (Pohl). His intelligence and experience were exercised most favourably for the spread of musical culture when he acted as stage-manager and musical director.
In the midst of his prosperity Kelly was induced to buy the lease of an old house at the corner of Market Lane in Pall Mall, and use it as a shop for his compositions. It opened on 1 Jan. 1802. A door led from it to the stage of the Opera House, and subscribers were allowed to go through on payment of two guineas yearly. Sheridan proposed to inscribe on the saloon ‘Michael Kelly, Composer of Wines and Importer of Music;’ it does not appear that Kelly ever took up the wine trade, Sheridan's joke being suggested by some casual remarks. The new business, not receiving proper attention, turned out disastrously, and in September 1811 Kelly was declared bankrupt.
The death, in 1805, of Anna Maria Crouch [q. v.], with whom he had been very intimate, was keenly felt by Kelly. He resolved upon leaving the stage, and his last appearance at Drury Lane was in ‘No Song, no Supper,’ 17 June 1808; his last on any stage was at Dublin on 5 Sept. 1811, in the theatre where he had first appeared. After several years of suffering from gout, Kelly died at Margate on 9 Oct. 1826. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden (Annual Biography, xi. 34).
Kelly wrote airs (and generally an overture) for the following pieces at Drury Lane Theatre: Conway's ‘False Appearances’ and ‘Fashionable Friends,’ 1789; Hoare's ‘Friend in Need,’ Cumberland's ‘Last of the Family,’ Porter's ‘Chimney Corner,’ Lewis's ‘Castle Spectre,’ in 1797; Colman's ‘Bluebeard,’ Franklin's ‘Outlaws,’ Hoare's ‘Captive of Spielberg,’ and Boaden's ‘Aurelia and Miranda,’ 1798; Colman's ‘Feudal Times,’ and Sheridan's ‘Pizarro,’ 1799; Dibdin's ‘Of Age To-morrow,’ Miss Baillie's ‘De Montford,’ and Fenwick's ‘Indians,’ 1800; Kemble's ‘Deaf and Dumb,’ Lewis's ‘Adelmorn,’ and (at Haymarket) T. Moore's ‘Gipsey Prince,’ 1801; Spencer's ‘Urania,’ Cobb's ‘Algonah’ and ‘House to be Sold,’ 1802; Dimond's ‘Hero of the North,’ Allingham's ‘Marriage Promise,’ and (at Haymarket) Colman's ‘Love Laughs at Locksmiths,’ 1803; James's ‘Cinderella,’ Franklin's ‘Counterfeit’ (and at Haymarket, Dimond's ‘Hunter of the Alps’ and Colman's ‘Gay Deceivers,’ at Covent Garden Reynolds's ‘Bad Bargain’), and Holt's ‘The Land we Live in,’ 1804; Tobin's ‘Honeymoon,’ Pye and Arnold's ‘Prior Claim,’ and Dimond's ‘Youth, Love, and Folly,’ 1805; Colman's ‘We Fly by Night,’ and Dimond's ‘Adrian and Orilla’ (at Covent Garden), Ward's ‘Forty Thieves,’ 1806; Dimond's ‘Young Hussar’ (Morton's ‘Town and Country,’ at Covent Garden), Lewis's ‘Wood Daemon’ and ‘Adelgitha,’ Luke's ‘House of Morville,’ and Siddons's ‘Time 's a Tell-tale,’ 1807; Cumberland's ‘Jew of Mogadore’ (Colman's ‘Africans,’ at Haymarket) and Lewis's ‘Venoni,’ 1808; Dimond's ‘Foundling of the Forest’ at Haymarket, and Arnold's ‘Jubilee’ at Lyceum, 1809; Dimond's ‘Gustavus Vasa’ at Covent Garden, and Des Hayes's ballet at the Opera House, 1810; Dimond's ‘Peasant Boy’ at Lyceum, and ‘Royal Oak’ at Haymarket, and Lewis's ‘One o'Clock,’ 1811; Horace Smith's ‘Absent Apothecary,’ T. Sheridan's ‘Russians’ and ‘Polly,’ Arnold's ‘Illusions,’
