The principal performer at the concerts in the earliest days (1742–circ. 1760) was the well-known actor and vocalist Beard, who was considered by Dibdin to be, “taken altogether, the best English singer.” Giulia Frasi, young and interesting, with her “sweet clear voice,” was heard in 1751 and 1752. Michael Festing at first led the band, and was succeeded (about 1752) by Abram Brown, a performer who (according to Burney) had “a clear, sprightly and loud tone, with a strong hand,” but who was deficient in musical knowledge and feeling. Parry, the Welsh harper (1746), and Caporale, the violoncello player, were also among the earlier performers.[228]
At first, choruses from oratorios (this was still the case in 1763) were a feature of the concerts, but the performances soon came to differ little from those of Vauxhall and Marylebone. In 1754 an entertainment of recitation, with a procession, was given under the name of Comus’s Court. In 1757 “Acis and Galatea” was performed for the benefit of the Marine Society. On 10 June, 1763[229] Bonnell Thornton’s ‘Burlesque Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day’ was performed, “adapted (by Burney) to the antient British music, viz.: the salt-box, the Jew’s-harp, the marrow-bones and cleavers, the hum-strum or hurdy-gurdy, etc., etc.” The performers sang the recitative, airs and choruses in masquerade dresses, and the salt-box song was especially successful. The fun must have been rather forced, though Johnson, who read the Ode when printed, “praised its humour,” seemed much diverted with it, and repeated the lines:—
In strains more exalted the salt-box shall join,
And clattering and battering and clapping combine;
With a rap and a tap while the hollow side sounds,
Up and down leaps the flap, and with rattling rebounds.
In 1762–1764 the principal singer was the Italian Tenducci,[230] whose voice, according to Miss Lydia Melford, was “neither man’s nor woman’s; but it is more melodious than either, and it warbled so divinely, that while I listened I really thought myself in Paradise.”
On 29 June, 1764, Mozart, then eight years old, performed on the harpsichord and organ several of his own compositions. On 12 May, 1767,[231] Catches and Glees were rendered with instrumental parts by Arne, an addition considered necessary on account of the size of the Rotunda. This was stated to be the first public performance of the kind in England.
In 1769 Dibdin was a singer of ballads, and on 12 May of this year there was a Jubilee Ridotto, an event at which we may pause to recall some of the earlier masquerades and balls which, from time to time, enlivened the routine of Ranelagh.
The most famous of these entertainments was the “Grand Jubilee Masquerade, in the Venetian taste,” that took place on Wednesday, 26 April, 1749, to celebrate the proclamation of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. The Masquerade (says Horace Walpole[232]) “had nothing Venetian in it, but was by far the best understood and prettiest spectacle I ever saw; nothing in a fairy tale ever surpassed it.... It began at three o’clock; at about five, people of fashion began to go; when you entered, you found the whole garden filled with masks and spread with tents, which remained all night very commodely. In one quarter was a Maypole dressed with garlands, and people dancing round it to a tabor and pipe, and rustic music, all masked, as were all the various bands of music that were disposed in different parts of the garden; some like huntsmen with French-horns, some like peasants, and a troop of harlequins and scaramouches in the little open temple on the mount. On the canal was a sort of gondola, adorned with flags and streamers, and filled with music, rowing about. All round the outside of the amphitheatre were shops, filled with Dresden china, Japan, &c., and all the shopkeepers in mask. The amphitheatre was illuminated, and in the middle was a circular bower, composed of all kinds of firs in tubs, from twenty to thirty feet high; under them, orange trees, with small lamps in each orange, and below them all sorts of the finest auriculas in pots; and festoons of natural flowers hanging from tree to tree. Between the arches, too, were firs, and smaller ones in the balconies above. There were booths for tea and wine, gaming-tables, and dancing, and about two thousand persons. In short, it pleased me more than the finest thing I ever saw.”