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Opera and Drama in Eighteenth-Century London Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
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.
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