In the 1750s, the King's Theatre in London was in a state of near collapse. A shifting series of alliances between performer-impresarios, aristocratic amateurs and bankers kept it afloat, but the venture was plagued by financial instability and managerial incompetence. Its artistic decline was even more spectacular. The days when Handel was the resident opera impresario were by now little more than a memory. Since that august era, no other composer of stature had stayed long enough in London to make an impact, and repertoire was of depressingly low quality. Perhaps only one factor ensured the survival of the theatre at all: the unchallenged place of Italian opera at the heart of the social and musicalworld of the English aristocracy. In the 1760s, there were some signs that the worst period was over. Highquality singers, always central to the success of Italian opera in London, began to appear more regularly, with the castrati Manzuoli and Elisi enjoying popular successes. More significant in the long term was the establishment of opera buffa as a regular part of the London season. Comic opera was cheaper to stage, gave variety to the season, and in due course produced its own lineage of stars with the charisma to attract audiences. Mixed seasons of opera seria and opera buffa afforded some protection against failure in either genre, and a further spreading of the risk was provided by ballet.

When taken in conjunction with the mid eighteenth-century Drummonds opera account and with other information recently compiled on salary levels, the newly discovered Hoare and Drummonds accounts allow us to establish what different types of singers earned in the 1770s. The following tables present annual salaries, excluding benefits. Salaries in square brackets are derived from information for the same singer from another year. Salaries followed by a question mark are derived from one or two of the winter, spring and summer instalments, as described above. It is worth repeating again the caution that these are notional figures; numerous factors may have led to salaries not being paid in full.

Manzuoli's £1,500 was quite exceptional. Over the period as a whole, the salary level of the primo uomo remained very stable at between £1,200 and £1,000. Salaries at the top end of this range went to singers with outstanding reputations (like Pacchierotti); at the lower end of the range Roncaglia, a performer who was regarded as no more than adequate, got the bare £1,000.

Pacchierotti was one of the outstanding singers of his age. As so much information survives about his salary in London in the late 1770s and early 1780s, it will be useful to present it as a case study of how a leading castrato at this period was paid.

Charles Burney's melancholy account of the state of the King's Theatre in the 1750s leaves the reader in no doubt that Italian opera in London was in a state of very serious disarray, following a sequence of schisms, failures, bankruptcies and imprisoned or absconding managers. So bad had matters become that the spectre of imminent collapse seemed to hang over the opera house at the start of each new regime. Earl Cowper's second wife wrote to him on 24 January 1757: ‘I don't like ye new Opera so well as ye last, but there was a very full House on Satturday, to ye great joy of Giardini and Mingotti. I begin to think that ye operas will go on.’ It was apparently something of a surprise to her that the season was likely to continue at all. Burney thought that these two musicians had set themselves up for ‘the chance of speedy ruin’ by daring to take on the management of this problematic theatre. Managerial shortcomings were more than matched by the sense of artistic decline. Indifferent performers and an over-reliance on the pasticcio had become perennial problems. Until the arrival of Cocchi, there was not even a resident composer at this period.

Any change of management in the King's Theatre was a matter of considerable interest to the aristocratic opera-going classes, and when early in 1773 news began to circulate that Hobart had finally given up, rumours about the succession were rife. On 12 January, George Bussy Villiers reported that the opera house was now to be ‘undertaken by several Gentlemen’. Changes were being made, and ‘some new Boxes’ were ‘already added to the theatre’. The leading figure in the financial take-over was James Brooke, who purchased from Hobart a half share of the company and then a further one-third share, giving him overall control. The remaining one-sixth share was retained by Peter Crawford, who continued to work as treasurer. Brooke was acting on behalf of his brother, the Reverend John Brooke and his wife Frances Brooke, and Richard and Mary Ann Yates. John Brooke seems to have had no active involvement in the King's Theatre at all. When the new managers took out a modest mortgage with the banker Henry Hoare, he was named as one of the three parties to the agreement who were: (1) James Brooke; (2) Richard and Mary Ann Yates; (3) John and Frances Brooke. The mortgage, however, was for the ‘joint and equal benefit’ of the other four. James Brooke, acting on behalf of his brother's wife, is often described as one of the proprietors.

The prosperity and high reputation of the English community in Rome would have been hard to predict when diplomatic relations between London and the Vatican were severed after the defeat of James II by William of Orange. For many decades, the Pope's support for the Jacobite cause made Rome an uncomfortable place for aristocratic English visitors. But the influence of the Jacobites began to wane, and by the mid century Rome had become one of the most important destinations on the Grand Tour. Thomas Jones reported that Romans arranged their English visitors in three classes: ‘Artisti’, who came for ‘Study and Improvement’; ‘Mezzi Cavalieri’, ‘who lived genteely, independent of any profession’; and ‘Cavalieri’ or ‘Milordi Inglesi’,who moved in a ‘Circle of Superior Splendour surrounded by a group of Satellites under the denomination of Travelling Tutors, Antiquarians, Dealers in Virtu, English Grooms, French Valets and Italian running footmen’. ‘To be a native of Great Britain’, Kelly wrote of his experiences in Italy in the late 1770s, ‘was a passe-partout’ all over the country.’ With no formal representation as yet at the Vatican, the large English community relied on a leading banker, Thomas Jenkins, who functioned in effect as an unofficial ambassador. As James Northcote pointed out in 1778, Jenkins was ‘of vast use to all the English, who fly to him as they would an Ambassador, for the King sends none to the Pope’.

JOURNAL ETRANGER, NO. 10 (NOVEMBER 1777), 148–55.

Spectacles de Londres

… Mais, pour la musique, l'article essentiel de la musique! il faudra que l'Opera de Paris baisse pavillon devant l'Opera de Londres, malgré ses Gretry, ses Gluck, ses Piccini même, qui assurement, est un bien grand homme, mais qui avec son génie, ne poura jamais faire chanter de la musique Italienne à des macheoires qui n'ont jamais que crié de la musique françoise. Nous avons les oreilles, nous pouvons même dire l'ame tout fraichement affectés des chefs d'oeuvres que nous avons eû le plaisir d'entendre hier & aujourd'hui, aux répétitions de l'Opera serieux de Creso du Sieur Sacchini & de celui des deux Contessi, opera Bouffon dont presque tous les airs & surtout les prèmiéres finales des trois actes sont du Sieur Paesiello. Il nous seroit bien difficile de rendre compte de celle qui nous a donné plus de plaisir. Ces deux musiques sont si analogues à leurs sujets, l'une est si majestueuse, si tendre, si brillante, l'autre, si gaïe, si aimable, si variée, si plaisante même, enfin elles sont toutes deux si bien ce qu'elles doivent être, qu'il faut nécessairement partager la couronne qu'on voudroit accorder à toutes le deux.

The bank accounts of the King's Theatre during the 1770s confirm the anecdotal evidence of letters, newspaper reports and satires that Brooke made a notable commercial success of the opera house. It was no ordinary achievement. Even to recover costs, she had to overcome formidable obstacles. Prior to its enlargements in 1778 and 1782, the theatre's capacity was probably no more than 1,000. Judith Milhous estimates a mid-century full-house at around 950 ‘with extreme crowding’, to which total must be added an unknown but probably small number of stage boxes. An equally limiting constraint on the theatre's income was the law restricting it to performances of Italian opera, particularly since the season lasted some sixty nights a year only. For four and a half months from July to November, the building remained closed. Had permission been granted for English productions, or even for a greater number of social events such as masquerades, some subsidy for Italian opera would have been possible, but this way of achieving financial stability was denied to successive proprietors. The only ways to increase income from the theatre with the existing restrictions were thus to raise admission charges or to increase the occupancy rate. To have put up the price of tickets would have been to take a big gamble; admission charges had long been established and any increase mightwell have been counter-productive.

Having assumed control of the King's Theatre in early 1773, Brooke soon found that she had inherited a theatre in better shape than must have seemed likely when negotiations with Hobart began. The obvious course of action was to retain Sacchini in order to build upon the success of Il Cid. Her main problem as she assumed responsibility for the longer-term direction of the King's Theatre as an opera house was the formulation of an artistic policy. Even for a manager with a background in opera, this was a complex task with several strands: the recruitment of ‘first’ singers of sufficient quality who could work together; the maintenance of a satisfactory balance of opera seria, comic opera and ballet; and the choice of individual works. Brooke had no background in opera, but she enjoyed one stroke of good fortune, because among her acquaintances was Charles Burney, who in the summer of 1770 had undertaken a ‘musical’ tour of Italy to collect materials for his history of music. During his time abroad, he had visited the major centres of Italian opera in Turin, Milan, Bologna, Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples. In 1772 he set off again, this time for the Low Countries, Germany and Austria, whence he returned in November 1772.

Probably no quality was more necessary for an opera impresario than the ability to cope with a crisis. Between 1774 and 1776, Brooke had to contend with a whole series of interlocking problems involving the irreconcilable demands of her leading singers, litigation over a broken contract and competition from a rival promoter of Italian opera stars. These were just the kinds of difficulties that had engulfed Hobart in 1771. The forceful and clear-sighted manner with which she surmounted the problems amounts to an impressive example of crisis management.

The new season began with Sacchini's Lucio vero, and on 29 January Perseo received its première. Both were successful, receiving sixteen and seventeen performances respectively. A reviewer in the Public Advertiser thought the music of Perseo up to Sacchini's usual standard, having ‘all the fire, all the elegance, all the pathos of that celebrated composer’. The choruses were still attracting favourable comment, being deemed ‘pleasing’ and one in particular ‘beautifully pathetic’. High-profile theatrical spectacle, prominent in Sacchini's first London operas, is still much in evidence. A lavish production meant lavish expenditure, and whatever his own inclinations, the composer could not have taken this course without the support of the opera management. Reviewers had remarked on the studied magnificence of the costumes and the elegance of the scenery in Il Cid, and Burney later praised the ‘knowledge of stage effects’ shown in this opera and in Tamerlano.

Gentlemen

According to your desire the Plan of the proposed Assistant Theatre is here explained in Writing for your further consideration.

From our situations in the Theatres Royal of Drury Lane and Covent Garden, we have had opportunities of observing many circumstances relative to our general Property which must have escaped those who do not materially interfere in the management of that Property – One point in particular has lately weigh'd extremely in our Opinions which is an Apprehension of a new Theatre being erected for some species or other of Dramatic Entertainment. Were this Event to take place on an opposing Interest in all probability the contest that would ensue would speedily end in the absolute ruin of one of the present Established Theatres, – We have reason it is true from His Majesty's gracious Patronage to the Present Houses to hope that another Patent for an opposing Theatre is not likely to be obtained – but the motives which appear to call for one, are so many and those of such nature as to encrease every day – that we cannot on the maturest consideration of the subject divest ourselves of the dread of such an event. With this Apprehension before us – We have naturally fallen into a joint consideration of the means either of preventing so fatal a Blow to the present Theatres or of deriving a general advantage from a Circumstance which might otherwise be their ruin –

Some of the leading motives for the establishment of a third Theatre are as follows –

1. 1st: The great extent of the Town and encreased Residence of a higher class of People who on account of many inconveniences seldom frequent the Theatres –

2. […]