15 - The sale of 1778

Summary

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.