Abstract
The Royal Academy of Music was founded in 1719 to establish regular seasons of Italian opera in London. By the time it closed its doors, nine seasons later, it had succeeded in setting higher standards of artistic taste and production. This did not come about by chance; it was the fruit of a conscious effort on the part of its supporters to create an opera worthy of London, a city transformed by a period of political stability and vast economic growth.l The intention of this article is to investigate the interests of the group of aristocrats who directed the Academy and to determine, first, their competence to manage and their motivation to support such a company, and secondly, their influence on its policies, particularly in the choice of librettos.
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Notes and References
For a description of the growth of interest in artistic patronage brought about by England’s new economic stability, see the introduction to Bernard Denvir: The Eighteenth Century: Art, Design and Society 1689–1789 (London, 1983), 1–24.
Gli amori d’Ergasto was produced at the Queen’s Theatre on 9 April. The London audience was already acquainted with all elements of Italian opera except secco recitative, by the early 1690s; see Curtis Price: ‘The Critical Decade for English Music Drama, 1700–1710’, Harvard Library Bulletin, xxvi (1978), 40.
Letters from Gaetano Berenstadt to Giacomo Zamboni (dated 13 Aug 1718) and Senesino to Giuseppe Riva (15 Sept 1718) refer to the plans for a season of operas in 1718–19; the letters are cited in Lowell Lindgren: ‘La carriera di Gaetano Berenstadt, contralto evirato (ca. 1690–1735)’, RIM, xix (1984), 45, 47.
Three operas produced by Heidegger in the season of 1716–17 were supported by a six-night subscription plan: the pasticcios Arminio and Lucio Vero and Handel’s Amadigi. The account book for this season, preserved in the Essex Record Office (15 M50/127), is described in Sybil Rosenfeld: ‘An Opera House Account Book’, Theatre Notebook, xvi (1962), 83–8.
The charter of incorporation was granted to the Academy on 27 July 1719 for 21 years. The original is in the Public Record Office, C 66/3531; a copy is in PRO T 52/30, pp. 404–10 (material in the PRO is cited by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office); see Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume: ‘The Charter for the Royal Academy of Music’, ML, lxvii (1986), 55. The long-term plan of the Academy had precedents in the Lullian Académie Royale de Musique (founded 1671) and the Brussels Académie de musique (1682–9); these institutions are described in Ariane Ducrot: ‘Les representations de l’Académie royale de musique a Paris au temps de Louis XIV (1671–1715)’, RMFC, x (1970), 19–55, and Lionel Renieu: Histoire des théâtres de Bruxelles (Paris, 1928), 181–4.
Graydon Beeks: The Chandos Anthems and Te Deum of George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1981), 36–9
For details of the relationship between George I and his son at this date, see John M. Beattie: ‘The Court of George I and English Politics, 1717–1720’, English Historical Review, lxxxi (1966), 20–36.
The implication of this timetable of performances is pointed out in Donald J. Burrows: Handel and the English Chapel Royal during the Reigns of Queen Anne and King George I (diss., Open U., 1981), 236–8.
On 31 Jan the Lord Chamberlain wrote to the Attorney General, Sir Nicholas Lechmere, for legal advice regarding the petition (PRO L.C. 5/157, p. 179).
The letter is printed in Otto Erich Deutsch: Handel: a Documentary Biography (London, 1955), 84–5.
The complete proposal (PRO L.C. 7/3, ff. 46–7) is printed in Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume: ‘New Light on Handel and the Royal Academy of Music in 1720’, Theatre Journal, xxxv (1983), 165–7.
ibid and n.5
The notice advertising the annual subscription plan (Daily Courant, 25 Nov 1721) is reprinted in Deutsch, p. 129. The annual subscription continued to be offered until the season of 1727–8, when it was abandoned apparently because it was too easily abused.
The formal warrant for the royal bounty (PRO L.C. 7/3, f.48) was issued on 8 May 1719. According to its terms, the right was reserved to withdraw the subsidy if the directors of the Academy did not follow the Lord Chamberlain’s instructions. By the authority of a Privy Seal letter dated 26 June 1727 (referred to in a warrant of 17 June 1727 in PRO T 52/36, p. 115) the annual bounty was increased to £1200; the additional sum was intended to defray taxes.
John Mainwaring: Memoirs of the Life of the late George Frederic Handel (London, 1760), 97, cites a figure of £40,000. The amount is increased to £50,000 by Charles Burney: A General History of Music (London, 1776–89), ed. F. Mercer (London, 1935), ii, 700, and others. According to a letter of 18 Feb 1720 from Sir John Vanbrugh to the retired publisher Jacob Tonson, the subscriptions to the Academy had then come to about £20,000; see The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh (London, 1928), iv, 125. 16 The deputy governor elected in the spring of 1720 was Charles Montagu, first Duke of Manchester. He was replaced in the 1720–21 season by Lord Bingley. In the 1723–4 season William Montagu, second Duke of Manchester was elected deputy governor and for the final three seasons, 1725–8, the Duke of Richmond held the position.
The warrant is printed in Deutsch, pp. 89–90.
The minutes for the three meetings of the directors, held on 27 and 30 Nov and 2 Dec 1719, are printed in Deutsch, pp. 96–8, and in Milhous and Hume, pp. 151–3.
It was decided at the meeting of 30 Nov to write to Bononcini, presumably at the suggestion of the Earl of Burlington, who was at the meeting and who had met the composer in Italy in 1715 and 1719.
For Ariosti’s extra-musical activities between 1717 and 1723, see Lowell Lindgren: ‘Ariosti’s London Years, 1716–29’, ML, lxii (1981), 337–40.
The essay originally appeared anonymously in the Weekly Journal; or, Saturday’s Post (9 March 1723); it was reprinted in A Collection of Miscellany Letters written for Nathaniel Mist by Defoe (London, 1722–1727), iii, 269–80.
The list of subscribers to Ariosti’s Six Cantatas and Six Lessons for the Viola d’Amore (London, 1724) identifies 133 persons as Academy subscribers, presumably for the 1723–4 season; see James L. Jackman and Dennis Libby: ‘Ariosti Attilio’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), i, 582.
see n.11
PRO L.C. 7/3, ff. 55–6 (c Feb 1719) and L.C. 5/157, pp. 228–31 (9 May 1719). The earlier copy specifies a total of ten directors, but from the spring of 1720 the usual number seems to have been twenty.
The roster of directors for the autumn of 1719 is compiled from the attendance records in the minutes of the directors’ meetings (see n.18). The lists of directors for the spring of 1720 and the seasons of 1720–21 and 1726–7 are in Deutsch, pp. 102, 123 and 199. Deutsch reprints the list for 1726–7 from Burney (General History, ii, 742), but did not locate Burney’s source; Burney states that the list was taken from the Daily Courant of 17 Dec 1726, but in fact it appeared in the London Journal of that date. The roster of directors for the final season, 1727–8, is taken from the list of candidates for the election, cited in a letter of 26 Nov 1727 from the deputy governor, Richmond, to a subscriber, John Clavering; Hertfordshire Record Office, Panshanger Manuscripts, D/EP F223, p. 47 (quoted by permission of Lady Ravensdale and the Hertfordshire Record Office; I am grateful to Carole Taylor for bringing this to my attention).
The financial records are described in Milhous and Hume, pp. 149–67.
see n.4
The best studies of Burlington’s patronage of the arts in general and his association with Handel are James Lees-Milne: Earls of Creation: Five Great Patrons of Eighteenth-Century Art (London, 1962), 103–69, and ‘Apollo of the Arts: Lord Burlington and his Circle’, catalogue of an exhibition at the Nottingham University Art Gallery, 1973.
George E. Dorris: Paolo Rolli and the Italian Circle in London, 1715–1744 (The Hague, 1967), 79. Portland’s losses in the South Sea crash are described in
George E. Cokayne: The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland and Ireland (London, rev. 1910–59), s.v. ‘Portland, first Duke of’. Thomas Coke, who continued as a director, is also said to have suffered heavy losses; see
Richard R. Sedgwick: History of Parliament, House of Commons, 1715–1754 (London, 1970), i, 565.
Weekly Journal; or, Saturday’s Post (20 April 1723)
The list of subscribers is in the West Sussex Record Office, Goodwood MSS 143 and 144 (by permission of the Trustees of the Goodwood Estate).
The letter is printed in Deutsch, p. 235.
West Sussex Record Office, Goodwood MS 103, f. 173; the letter is printed in Deutsch, pp. 303–4, where it is erroneously dated January rather than June 1733.
Earls of Burlington and Stair, Viscount Limerick, Duke of Rutland, Sir John Buckworth, Sir Michael Newton, and Lords Lovell, Cadogan and Bathurst (a subscriber but not a director of the Academy).
see Carole Taylor’s essay in this volume
The directors are named in a letter of 5 Nov 1741 from Horace Walpole to Horace Mann in Florence (Deutsch, pp. 523–4).
This letter from John Branson, steward, to his employer John Russell, Duke of Bedford, is printed in Deutsch, pp. 569–70. A letter of 19 June 1744 from John de Pesters to Isabella, Countess Denbigh, mentions that the Earl of Chesterfield was a director of the opera in 1743–4; see Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC) 68: Manuscripts of the Earl of Denbigh V (London, 1911), 179.
letter of 17 Oct 1749 (O.S.), in The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield (London, 1932), iv, 1420; in Chesterfield’s opinion, the fact that in Italy music was placed above sculpture and painting was proof of the decline of that country (letter of 22 June 1749; Letters, iv, 1360–61).
‘I am persuaded that to be a virtuoso (so far as befits a Gentleman) is a higher step towards the becoming a Man of Virtue and good Sense, than the being what in this age we call a Scholar’; Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury: Soliloquy or Advice to an Author (London, 1710), 174. The Soliloquy was reprinted in Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711), which appeared in three editions during the Academy period: 1720, 1723 and 1727.
On 4 Feb 1707 his tutor at Oxford, Dr Richard Smalbrook, wrote to Percival’s uncle and guardian, Sir Robert Southwell: ‘The great occasion of Sir John’s expenses has been his love of music, which has engaged him to have more entertainments than otherwise he would have had’: The Correspondence of George Berkeley and Sir John Percival, ed. Benjamin Rand (Cambridge, 1914), 3. According to HMC 63: Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont II (London, 1923), 9, Percival travelled on the Continent between 1705 and 1707.
The subscription list is in GB-Lbm Add. 11732. The other two peers to subscribe were Paisley and Plymouth, neither of whom was involved with the opera company.
For an account of the organization of the Academy of Ancient Musick, see H. Diack Johnstone: The Life and Work of Maurice Greene (1696–1755) (diss., U. of Oxford, 1967), i, 95–110. Although the membership of theatre musicians was not allowed, an exception was made for Senesino.
Deutsch, p. 285
HMC 63: Egmont MSS II, 50. Percival also employed the tenors Annibale Pio Fabri in 1730 and Carlo Arrigoni in 1732 as music masters for his daughters; ibid, 1, 15, 242.
Burney, ii, p. 729
John Hawkins: A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1776), 1875 edn, ii, 860n
The account books and letters from Blathwayt’s Grand Tour are in the Gloucestershire Record Office, Dyrham Park MSS D1799/A325 and D1799/C7; they are cited here by permission of Mr Justin Blathwayt, whose family muniments are deposited in the Gloucestershire Record Office. The letters have been translated by Nora Hardwick in The Grand Tour: William and John Blaythwayt of Dyrham Park 1705–1708 (Bristol, 1985), 34–136.
While the travellers were abroad Blainville kept a detailed journal. Written in French, it was first published in an English translation in 1743, some ten years after his death. This publication won the admiration of Dr Johnson who considered it one of the best travel books of its kind. Unfortunately, as the editor of Blainville’s manuscript makes clear in the preface, much had to be eliminated to reduce the work to publishable proportions. As an example of what has been cut, he mentions accounts given by Blainville of entertainments, operas and plays, together with descriptions of meetings and conversations with people: Travels through Holland, Germany, Switzerland and Other Parts of Europe but Especially Italy, trans. and ed. Daniel Soyer and John Lockman (London, 1743–5).
letter of 28 Aug/8 Sept 1705; still in Geneva on 29 Jan/9 Feb 1706, Blainville reported of Blathwayt that la Clavessin va aussi toûjours son train’.
This was Blainville’s first letter from Venice, dated 14/25 Feb 1707.
Travels, ii, 19: ‘The opera this Evening was very magnificent, the Decorations fine, and the performers out-did even themselves in the Execution. The subject was the Story of L. Junius Brutus, who expelled the Tarquins out of Rome, and caused his two Son’s Heads to be cut off for conspiring for the Restoration. We have never yet seen a Piece so well carried on; and what gave me the greatest Pleasure, was that he who acted in the character of Brutus, was a very Man.’ (Brutus was performed by Il Scaccia.)
Reinhard Strohm: ‘Handel and his Italian Opera Texts’, Essays on Handel and the Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1985), 39
Ursula Kirkendale: ‘The Ruspoli Documents on Handel’, JAMS, xx (1967), 226–7
Johnstone, i, p. 113 and ii, p. 55
see n.30. The violinist Bitti, a member of the Cannons concert and, in 1720, of the Academy orchestra, was performing in Jamaica by 1730. He was perhaps one of the ‘Italian Masters’ who accompanied Portland in 1723; Philip H. Highfill, jr., Kalman A. Burnim and Edward A. Langhans: A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers, and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, 18 vols in progress (Carbondale, 1973—), s.v. ‘Bitti, Alexander’.
GB-NO Portland MSS PwB 82 and 84 (by permission of the Keeper of the Manuscripts, U. of Nottingham). There were two William Powells, senior and junior, among the subscribers to the Fund for the Support of Decay’d Musicians in 1742; the subscription list is in the possession of the Royal Society of Musicians, London.
The article by Ingmar Bengtsson on Roman in The New Grove (xvi, 118) quotes an ‘unsubstantiated’ report that the violinist was for a time in Newcastle’s service. For Roman as a member of the Academy orchestra, see Milhous and Hume, 158.
Trevor Fawcett: Music in Eighteenth-Century Norwich and Norfolk (Norwich, 1979), 21
The Duke of Kent’s household accounts for 1725–6 record payments to the oboist William Zinzan (also a subscriber in 1742 to the Fund for the Support of Decay’d Musicians); Bedfordshire Record Office, Lucas collection, L 31/198 (by permission of Lady Lucas). Lord Bingley’s letter-book for 1727–8 refers to three unnamed musicians in his employ and also mentions a commission’s being undertaken in Bingley’s London house by the Flemish painter Peter Tillemans who, with Joseph Goupy, had provided scenes for the Academy in 1724; the letter-book is in the West Yorkshire Archives, Fox Lane MS LF 134 (cited by permission of the Leeds District Archives Office). That the Duke of Rutland may have supported at least one musician is suggested by a song entitled ‘Thalestris Arm’s with Spear & Shield, the words written by a Lady of Quality’, composed by Mr Marchant, organist to the Duke of Rutland (the copy in GB-Lbm is dated c1720).
Mary F. Klinger: ‘Music and Theater in Hogarth’, MQ, lvii (1971), 421
see n.28
The account books are at Chatsworth, Devonshire Papers, MS 75A, ‘Household Accounts, 1714–15’ (cited by permission of the Duke of Devonshire and the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement).
Lowell Lindgren: A Bibliographic Scrutiny of Dramatic Works set by Giovanni and his Brother Antonio Maria Bononcini (diss., Harvard U., 1972), 158
Rolli’s dedication to Burlington of the Academy’s libretto of Astarto in 1720 reads: ‘Questa è quell’ Opera che l’E[ccellenza] V[ostra] nel suo primo viaggio in Italia, onorò in Roma, di sua presenza nelle prove, e che io diressi su’l Teatro Capranica’.
Amadei appeared in concerts under Ottoboni’s patronage between 1690 and 1696, and he is again referred to in 1702 as a composer in Ottoboni’s employ. His first known opera, Teodosio il Giovane, was given in Ottoboni’s palace in 1711, with sets by Filippo Juvarra. According to Michael F. Robinson (The New Grove, i, 303), nothing is known of Amadei’s whereabouts until early 1719 when he performed in London. Owain Edwards (The New Grove, iv, 1), states that the violinist Pietro Castrucci was first supported in London by Burlington. The exact date of his arrival, and that of his brother Prospero and Amadei, can be fixed at 1 May 1715.
Their arrival at Dover is reported in Robert W. Williams: ‘Lord Burlington and the “Gifts for Senr. Pope”: a False Dating’, Notes and Queries, ccxviii (1973), 7–8.
Chatsworth, Devonshire Papers, ‘Graham & Collier Account Book, 1719–22’. The payments to the four musicians are as follows: 22 Oct 1719: Pietro Castrucci (£25), Prospero (£15) and Mantelli (£15) for half a year’s salary due at Michaelmas 1718 22 Jan 1720: Paid £14 for lodging the Italians at Chiswick 16 Apr 1720: To the Castruccis, Amadei and Mantelli (£24) for wages from 25 January to 18 April 22 July 1721: To Pietro Castrucci (£13710s) in full of all wages and demands to this day 13 Sept 1721: To Mantelli (£52 10s) in full discharge of all wages and demands to this day.
David B. Horn: British Diplomatic Representatives, 1689–1789, Camden Society, 3rd ser., xlvi (London, 1932), 74–9. From Feb 1707 to Oct 1711 Davenant was secretary in the German States and lived at Frankfurt.
Gustavo Costa: ‘Un avversario di Addison e Voltaire: John Shebbeare’, Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, xcix (1964–5), 733–6. Davenant persuaded Salvini to prepare a translation of Addison’s Cato and arranged for two performances of it in Florence in 1716.
J. Merrill Knapp: ‘Handel’s Tamerlano: the Creation of an Opera’, MQ, lvi (1970), 406
Owen Swiney, the Academy’s agent in Venice and Bologna, recommended the libretto of Venceslao to the Academy in 1725–6, preferring it to Handel’s Alessandro for Faustina’s début (letters of 17/28 Dec 1725 and 4/15 March 1726 to the Duke of Richmond in the West Sussex Record Office, Goodwood MS 105/395, 398). The collection of letters from Swiney to Richmond is transcribed in Elizabeth Gibson: The Royal Academy of Music (1719–1728): The Institution and its Directors (diss., U. of London, 1986), ii, 66–95; see also idem: ‘Owen Swiney and the Italian Opera in London’, MT, cxxv (1984), 82–6.
Horn, p. 82
During the winter of 1697–8 Manchester was the dedicatee of two operas produced in Venice: C. F. Pollarolo’s Marzio Coriolano (M. Noris) at the theatre of S Giovanni Grisostomo and M. A. Ziani’s Odoardo (A. Zeno) at S Angelo. On 17/28 Dec 1697, Manchester wrote to the Duke of Shrewsbury about his sojourn in Venice: ‘The only diversion I can propose to myself is their music, which is now begun, and will be in perfection this Carnival’; HMC 45: Manuscripts of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry II (London, 1903), 589.
see Vanbrugh’s letters to Manchester dated 24 Feb, 16 March, 11 May, 27 July and 17 Aug 1708: The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh, iv, 16–18, 20–21, 24, 26. At this time Manchester was also involved in an invitation to Bononcini to visit London. Manchester’s unaccepted invitation is mentioned in a letter to him of 27 May 1707 from Henry Boyle (secretary of state and later Lord Carleton); printed in William Montagu, Duke of Manchester: Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne (London, 1864), ii, 223 (see also Lindgren: ‘A Bibliographic Scrutiny’, 227–8).
While on this second visit to Venice, Manchester was the dedicatee of the libretto of F. Gasparini’s Flavio Anicio Olibrio (A. Zeno, P. Pariati), produced at the theatre of S Cassiano.
Reinhard Strohm: ‘Händel in Italia: nuovi contributi’, RIM, ix (1974), 65
Ricci and Pellegrini collaborated on scenes for Pirro e Demetrio and Camilla at the Queen’s Theatre in 1708–9, and Ricci created the setting for Idaspe fedele, which was produced at the same theatre on 25 May 1710; see Anthony Blunt and Edward Croft-Murray: Venetian Drawings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in the Collection of H.M. the Queen at Windsor Castle (London, 1957), 41–2.
The story of Coke’s Grand Tour is related in Lees-Milne: Earls of Creation, 221–31 and in Charles W. James: Chief Justice Coke and his Family and Descendants at Holkham (London, 1929), 179–93, 201–8.
For Valentine, see Martin Medforth: ‘The Valentines of Leicester’, MT, cxxii (1981), 812, and Michael Tilmouth: ‘Valentine’, The New Grove, xix, 494. Valentine is identified as Coke’s flute instructor in the Grand Tour account books kept by Edward Jarrett: ‘An Account of the Moneys that I Received of Mr. Hobart upon account of My Master Thomas Coke’, at Holkham Hall, MSS 733–4 (cited by permission of the Holkham Estate Office).
According to Gerald Gifford (The New Grove, xvi, 195), Roseingrave went to Italy in 1709 to study music and ‘probably’ returned to England in 1714 or 1715. Coke’s account books note that Roseingrave was still in Turin as late as 25 April 1715. For Roseingrave’s involvement with the Academy’s production of Narciso, see Andrew D. McCredie: ‘Domenico Scarlatti and his Opera Narcisso,’ AcM, xxxiii (1961), 19–29.
In 1716 Juvarra made some ‘disegni di più fatti per diversi milordi inglesi’; see Albert Brinckmann, Lorenzo Rovere and Vittorio Viale: Filippo Juvarra (Milan, 1939), 61. Coke may have been one of these English noblemen. For Juvarra as the probable designer of sets for Scarlatti’s opera, see Mercedes Viale-Ferrero: Filippo Juvarra: scenografo e architetto teatrale (Turin, 1970), 383. Coke was also introduced to the librettist Zeno in Venice in 1717 and bought several manuscripts from him (James, p. 203).
In 1733 Coke was a founding member of the Society of Dilettanti, and on 26 Nov 1736 he wrote to Burlington: ‘As a virtuoso, I encourage both [opera houses], and have subscribed to Handell, for which I have been severely reprimanded by my brethren’ (James, p. 206).
Dorris, pp. 187–8. In the dedication Rolli mentioned Coke’s knowledge of Italian letters, his collections of books and paintings and his general ‘conoscenza e buon gusto’.
Queensberry was a non-performing member of the club from Feb 1715 to Dec 1716, and the Duke of Chandos also belonged; Margaret Crum: ‘An Oxford Music Club, 1690–1719’, Bodleian Library Record, ix (1974), 92, 98.
HMC 56: Calendar of Stuart Papers V (Hereford, 1912), 351–2. Nicolini performed the title role in this production. According to a letter of 13/24 Dec 1717 from Alexander Cunningham, resident at Venice, to Thomas Stanyon (secretary to the Duke of Newcastle), the Earl of Peterborough was also in Venice for this carnival season (PRO S.P. 99/61, f.451).
Rolli’s letter of 18 Oct 1720 to Giuseppe Riva describes the problems surrounding this production; Deutsch, pp. 114–15.
Queensberry left Venice for Rome at the beginning of March 1718 (letter of 4 March 1718 from Cunningham to Stanyon in PRO S.P. 99/62, unfoliated). The Post Boy for 29 Aug 1719 announced Queensberry’s return to London from his continental travels.
Three volumes of Finch’s Grand Tour accounts are preserved in the Leicestershire Record Office, Finch Collection, Acc. 6 (cited by permission of the Leicestershire Record Office). The two librettos are in the same collection (DG 7/3/11 and 12). The Academy’s production of Radamisto was based on F. Gasparini’s setting as revised for Florence in 1712 (Strohm: ‘Handel and his Italian Opera Texts’, 44).
Horn, p. 74
The collection of scores bearing Buckworth’s signature and bookplate, in GBLam, is cited in Reinhard Strohm: ‘Handel’s Pasticci’, Essays on Handel, 177–8.
The Complete Peerage, s.v. ‘Brydges, John, Marquis of Carnarvon’
On 30 Jan 1722 Richard Steele wrote to Davenant, who was apparently impatient at a play of his not being accepted without delay; the letter is cited in The Correspondence of Richard Steele, ed. Rae Blanchard (Oxford, 1941), 173–4.
Walter H. Rubsamen: ‘The Jovial Crew: History of a Ballad Opera’, IMSCR, vii, Cologne 1958 (Kassel, 1959), 240–43
see for example the minutes of the three directors’ meetings in 1719 (Deutsch, pp. 96–8) and the letters of Swiney to the Duke of Richmond (n.71). A sample of the directors’ involvement is given in a letter of 2 April 1725 from Nicola Haym to Swiney regarding the proposed hiring of the alto castrato Giovanni Battista Minelli: ‘If you have not, as yet, Engaged Minelli, meddle no more, in that affair: For one of the Directors, who has heard him sing, in Italy, says, That He is not, at all, fit for the English Theatre’ (Haym’s instructions are referred to in a letter of 30 April/11 May 1725 from Swiney to Richmond; Goodwood MS 105/390).
Mainwaring, p. 78
Two Discourses (London, 1719), 42–3
letter of 2/13 Aug 1726 to the Duke of Richmond (Goodwood MS 105/404)
letter of 17/28 Dec 1725 to Richmond (Goodwood MS 105/395)
Giovanni Bononcini’s Astarto was produced in Rome in Jan 1715, Erminia for carnival 1719 and Crispo for carnival 1721. Antonio Maria Bononcini’s Astianatte was produced in Venice for carnival 1718 and his Griselda was first performed in Dec 1718 in Milan.
The dedication by Bononcini of the libretto of Farnace to Peterborough reads: ‘Quest’ Opera che da V[ostra] E[ccellenza] mi fu data in nome della Reale Accademia’, suggesting that Peterborough may have had a hand in its selection. Anastasia wrote that it had been chosen by ‘very good judges’ in an undated letter to Giuseppe Riva, printed in Lowell Lindgren: ‘Parisian Patronage of Performers from the Royal Academy of Musick (1719–1728)’, ML, lviii (1977), 15–16.
Swiney refers to his recommendation of these two operas in letters to the Duke of Richmond, dated 4/15 March and 30 Sept/11 Oct 1726 (Goodwood MS 105/398, 407). The first, Teuzzone, was suggested with a view of ‘quieting the minds of the two contending Ladies’.
Strohm: ‘Handel’s Pasticci’, 167–9
Strohm: ‘Handel and his Italian Opera Texts’, 45–6
letter of 4/15 March 1726 to Richmond (Goodwood MS 105/398). Lee’s The Rival Queens; or, The Death of Alexander the Great had been part of the London theatre repertory since 1677. The original rival queens, as played by Mrs Boutell and Mrs Marshall, also came to blows on the stage; see Thomas Davies: Dramatic Miscellanies (London, 1785), iii, 297–8. Several other operas produced by the Academy would have been familiar to the London audiences from their appearance on the stage as spoken tragedies: Arsace (John Banks’s The Unhappy Favourite, first produced in 1681), Tamerlano (Nicholas Rowe’s Tamerlane, 1701), Astianatte (Ambrose Philips’s The Distrest Mother, 1712) and Coriolano (John Dennis’s The Invader of his Country, 1719).
letter of 19 Dec 1721 from Dr William Stratford, Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, to Lord Edward Harley; HMC 29: Manuscripts of the Duke of Portland; Harley MSS V (London, 1901), 311
‘Illud adjiciendum videtur, duci Argumenta non e confessis tantum, sed etiam a Fictione’; Quintilian: De Institutio Oratoria, 5.10.95 and 5.14.14, trans. H. E. Butler, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass., 1966) (I am grateful to Duncan Chisholm for bringing this epigraph to my attention).
For the subscribers to the 1728–9 season, see n.31. The election for the directors for this season was advertised in the London Gazette and the Daily Courant, both for 3 Dec 1728 (Deutsch, p. 229).
According to letters written to Italy by Faustina, Senesino and Boschi (referred to in Swiney’s correspondence with Richmond of 20/31 Oct 1727 and 5/16 Jan and 16/27 Feb 1728; Goodwood MS 105/423, 426 and 428). On 16/27 May 1729 Swiney reported that both Handel and Heidegger had assured him of the Academy’s financial viability (Goodwood MS 105/436).
On 30 Nov 1728 the Weekly Journal; or, British Gazetteer reported: ‘We hear a Subscription has been compleated among the Nobility, in order to defray the Expence of a Concert twice a Week, to entertain the Ladies this Winter, the Italian Singers having refus’d to come over’.
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Gibson, E. (1987). The Royal Academy of Music (1719–28) and its Directors. In: Sadie, S., Hicks, A. (eds) Handel. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09139-3_8
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Print ISBN: 978-1-349-09141-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-09139-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)