As a voluntary and temporary association of individuals at a place of entertainment, the audience for opera and oratorio performances had the same attributes as a crowd at an execution or the customers of a coffee shop. In contrast to those latter groups, which lack readily available evidence of their membership, the musical audience can be reconstructed from surviving ego-documents and financial accounts. This audience was not a political party or faction with distinct aims for social change or stasis, nor was it a charitable organization with a mission. Nonetheless it displayed some collective features in both its composition and its behaviour. Though meeting to be entertained for three to four hours (temporary association) and needing renewal each night (reconfiguration) might suggest that the audience had little role in what was performed by whom, at which theatre, we will find that the audience was by no means a passive element in its choices.

Beginning with John Mainwaring, the first biographer of Handel in terms of having a monograph published (in 1760) devoted solely to the musician, the audience has been portrayed as both supporter and major enemy of Handel. In charging the audience with ignorance, indifference, and neglect, and even outright opposition and hostility, biographers have made the audience responsible for Handel's illfortune, whether it be paralysis, financial difficulties, or the premature cessation of seasons. Expressed in such bald terms the charges appear ridiculous but it is worth exploring the use of the audience as an explanatory tool, before turning in the next chapter to an evaluation of actual and potential audience members to see what we can learn about the values that people brought to performances, their frequency of attendance, their demographic qualities, and their attitudes to the works and performances. Biographers’ claims about audience demographics need careful analysis because they concern those three troublesome elements of social relations: class, gender, and religion.

Class

IN our present circumstances of universal suffrage and schooling, economic plenty, and a safety-net of social and medical programmes, it can be difficult to imagine life in Britain 300 years ago. With about 7 million inhabitants, the formerly independent countries of England, Wales, and Scotland that constituted Great Britain, coupled with Ireland (the closest colony), were on their way to creating a worldwide empire using old-fashioned force of arms, newly developed economic domination, and the labour of slaves in American and Caribbean colonies.