Finances
THE OPERA
As WAS true in the opening decades of the century, Italian opera in the
1730’s and 1740’s faced problems in financing which differed from tltose
of the playhouses proper; and many of the lessons which might have been
learned from the financial disasters of the Royal Academy of Music in the
1720’s apparently went unlteeded. The first great venture of the Academy
ended in deficits in the spring of 1728, and it was a full season before London
saw a new operatic enterprise.
The great problem, as before, centered in securing a sufficient subsid)',
in addition to subscriptions and box-office receipts, to meet the exceptionally
high salaries (higli by playhouse standards) wlrich a relatively small number
of singers commanded. As was true in the 1720’s, opera during most seasons
relied upon four principal sources of income: a yearly subsidy from the
King, income from a group of yearly subscribers, the box-office receipts
from those who did not subscribe, and grants from otlier opera patrons
who at the end of the season contributed the sums necessary to balance
the accounts. Although no account books are known to survive to give
us an itemized statement of the financial negotiations and problems, some
indications of the financial operations can be pieced together from the
newspapers and correspondence of the period.
In the nearly twenty years from tlie autumn of 1725 to the spring
of 1747 opera could depend pretty regularly upon an annual subventioi١
of £1,000 from the King, a pattern established in tlie early years of the
Royal Academy of Music. To this support was added, in many seasons)
a grant of £250 from tlie Prince of Wales, and once in a great while the
Royal bounty was extended to two competing companies. Althougli these
sums could certainly be put down in a preliminary budget, they were an
assistance, not a solution, to the financial problems.
In 1729, when opera resumed, after a season’s darkness at the King؛
Theatre, Heidegger and Handel, who managed the enterprise, again utilized
a series of subscriptions, by which the management might know with
some certainty the extent of regular financial support. No evidence exists
to indicate the number of actual subscribers in these early years, but in
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