Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- List of musical examples
- Acknowledgements
- A note on conventions
- Introduction
- 1 The Hobart management
- 2 The new managers take control
- 3 Sacchini and the revival of opera seria
- 4 Recruitment procedures and artistic policy
- 5 The King's Theatre in crisis
- 6 The recruitment of Lovattini
- 7 The English community in Rome
- 8 Lucrezia Agujari at the Pantheon
- 9 Caterina Gabrielli
- 10 Rauzzini's last season
- 11 The King's Theatre flourishes
- 12 The Queen of Quavers satire
- 13 Financial management
- 14 Opera salaries
- 15 The sale of 1778
- Appendices
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
14 - Opera salaries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- List of musical examples
- Acknowledgements
- A note on conventions
- Introduction
- 1 The Hobart management
- 2 The new managers take control
- 3 Sacchini and the revival of opera seria
- 4 Recruitment procedures and artistic policy
- 5 The King's Theatre in crisis
- 6 The recruitment of Lovattini
- 7 The English community in Rome
- 8 Lucrezia Agujari at the Pantheon
- 9 Caterina Gabrielli
- 10 Rauzzini's last season
- 11 The King's Theatre flourishes
- 12 The Queen of Quavers satire
- 13 Financial management
- 14 Opera salaries
- 15 The sale of 1778
- Appendices
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
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.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Opera and Drama in Eighteenth-Century LondonThe King's Theatre, Garrick and the Business of Performance, pp. 198 - 214Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001