Broadly speaking, the British reception of foreign musicians appearing in London at the end of the eighteenth century was one of adulation. Most of these artists had arrived via Paris, where some had acquired a mantle of sophistication unknown in London. Paris was a city of fashion, which, if it could not rival London in economic clout, was the acknowledged European capital of culture, of refined taste and manners. British amateurs were therefore happy to admit these foreign artists into their homes both for private concerts, and in the capacity of music teachers for themselves and their children. One of the most alluring – not to mention gifted – of the performing artists to arrive in London from Paris was Giovanni Battista Viotti, whose public concerts in the last decade of the eighteenth century were among the most popular of the many that were on offer.