FROM LOSSES TO LAWSUIT: PATRONAGE OF THE ITALIAN OPERA IN LONDON BY LORD MIDDLESEX, 1739–45

Abstract

CHARLES SACKVILLE, Earl of Middlesex and later 2nd Duke of Dorset, was the principal director of the Italian opera in London during the 1740s. Arriving on the scene just as Handel left it once and for all, he has attracted limited attention from Handel scholars;' too little is known of the complex world of Italian opera patronage that Handel rejected so summarily after the 1741-2 season. Outside Handel studies, operatic patronage and finance during this period are virtually unexplored. Middlesex (1711-69) was the eldest son of Lionel Cranfield Sackville, 1st Duke of Dorset. After completing his education at Westminster and Oxford he visited the Continent twice, between 1731 and 1733 for his Grand Tour and again in 1737 and 1738.2 Enthusiastic and outgoing, he undertook the direction of the Italian opera for the social and cultural prestige it promised. He fancied himself a poet, and the considerable interest he had shown in operatic affairs while on his Grand Tour gave him some credentials as an impresario. On his more recent visit his enthusiasm had extended to trying his hand as a producer when he mounted 'une masque superbe' and apparently other entertainments for the pleasure and diversion of his friends.3 But the opera in London declined in status under his direction. Attitudes were changing towards the Italian opera in the mid eighteenth century: the fashionable rage for the genre that had prevailed in the 1720s and early 1730s had abated, and Middlesex was also hampered by his own shortcomings. Two recently discovered sets of documents show Middlesex's efforts to promote and sustain the Italian opera in London between 1739 and 1744, offering new information about its financial administration and clues to the nature of operatic patronage in general in the first half of the eighteenth century. Records survive at the Royal Bank of Scotland, Drummond's Branch, of the subscription accounts