A FRENCH TRAVELLER'S VIEW

OF HANDEL'S OPERAS
BY WINTON DEAN

THE Handel collection of Mr. Gerald Coke, to whom I am indebted

for permission to publish the quotations that follow, contains a
neatly written manuscript volume of 250 pages, in contemporary
calf binding, entitled ' Voiage d'Angleterre d'Hollande et de Flandre
fait en Pannee 1728 Par M r Fougeroux Pierre Jacques'. It is in the
form of six extensive letters addressed to an unknown friend or
patron in France, and gives an elaborate account of the topography,
buildings and art collections of London and parts of the surrounding
country, and of the life, habits and pastimes of the people. While I
must confine myself here to the few pages dealing with music and
the theatre, the whole volume is of such wide interest, especially to
the social and art historian, that it seems worth while to give a short
description of its contents.
Little is known of the author; but both his son Auguste-Denis
Fougeroux de Bondaroy (1732-89) and his brother-in-law Henri-
Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1700-82) were well-known botanists
and agronomists. The elder Fougeroux married Ange"lique Duhamel.
The younger was much influenced by his uncle, who established a
botanical garden, to acclimatize exotic trees and improve the
quality of fruit, vegetable and cereal crops, on his estate at Denain-
villiers in the Gatinais, and wrote a six-volume treatise (1750-61)
that exercised considerable influence on the subsequent history of
French agriculture. Uncle and nephew shared that universal interest
in the sciences characteristic of the age of the encyclopedists.
Auguste-Denis Fougeroux published researches on the formation of
bones in animals and on geological and archaeological subjects
(including the ruins of Herculaneum), and was encouraged in
chemical experiments by his friend Lavoisier. He inherited his
uncle's property at Denainvilliers and continued to develop it on
the same lines. At the end of his life, when living in Paris a stone's
throw from the Bastille, he kept a diary describing the events of
the first weeks of the Revolution (12 July-29 August 1789). This
valuable historical document was published by Lucien Scheler in
i960. It seems likely that Duhamel was the recipient of Pierre-
Jacques Fougeroux's 'Voiage d'Angleterre', which may, like his
son's 1789 diary, have come on the market when the Denainvilliers
archives were dispersed in the 1950's.
The author left Paris with two friends at the beginning of April
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1728 "dans l'idee tous trois de ne rien obmettre de tous ce qui peut
regarder les beaux arts". The first letter describes their journey by
way of Beauvais, Abbeville, Montreuil, Calais, Dover, Canterbury
and Rochester; the last their return by the same route as far as
Calais and then through what is now Belgium and Northern France.
On arrival in London they were greeted by "la fumee du charbon",
which almost concealed St. Paul's and which, as soon as they reached
their lodgings, "nous commengames a sentir violemment . . .
Donnez nous le temps de respirer s'il vous plait". The second letter
is a topographical survey of London, its principal public and private
buildings, palaces, churches, hospitals, squares and gardens, and all
manner of functional services from prisons to synagogues. The third
deals with the art collections: Fougeroux had obtained introductions
to many private patrons and collectors, including the Dukes of
Devonshire, Rutland and Somerset, the Earls of Pembroke and
Burlington, Sir Robert Walpole and the painter Jonathan Richard-
son. The fourth letter describes the towns and great country houses
outside London to which Fougeroux made sight-seeing excursions.
The former included Oxford (where he visited the "College d'Al-
sold"), Cambridge (where he climbed to the roof of King's College
Chapel and saw George II confer degrees), Northampton, Salisbury
and Windsor. Among the country houses were Wanstead, Audley
End, Wimpole, Kimbolton, Broughton, Blenheim, Wilton, Cannons
and Burlington's villa at Chiswick. He also visited Newmarket for
the races, Stonehenge, Hampton Court and Chelsea and Green-
wich Hospitals. Wherever he went he recorded his impressions,
often in minute detail. The fifth letter, perhaps the most enter-
taining of all, contains his view of the English character and the
manner in which it revealed itself in all manner of pursuits, from
costume and cooking to the law, trade, armed services, arts, sciences,
and many forms of sport. Fougeroux was nothing if not comprehen-
sive: a detailed section on prostitutes, including their method of
provoking persons put in the stocks for sodomy, is immediately
followed by one on religion. The English addiction to fighting
(with each other and with animals), hunting and ball games is
duly noted; in particular the winter sport of football in the streets,
which often smashed the windows of houses and carriages.
It is this fifth letter that contains the passages on music and the
theatre. I give the musical section in full, beginning with the
description of the opera house (the King's Theatre in the Hay-
market), but have summarized the paragraphs on the other theatres,
apart from the account of 'The Beggar's Opera' with which this
part of the book closes. Fougeroux is sparing of dates, but seems to
have reached London about the end of the first week in April and
stayed at least two months. He is an acute if sometimes prejudiced
observer with a good eye for detail that supplies valuable fresh
information about the performance of Handel's operas. He can turn

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 a pretty phrase, as when he compares the chandeliers in the King's
Theatre to puppet dancers on strings, and he is often (perhaps
unintentionally) amusing: witness his statement that the English
translations in the printed librettos on sale at the opera house were
intended for the ladies and his remarks on the efficacy of music in
France for keeping the young out of debauchery. He was a cultivated
man, but not a professional musician. He had never heard of
Handel, whose name he spells phonetically. His punctuation,
capitalization and accentuation are often erratic and inconsistent;
I have regularized them, but not attempted to standardize the
spelling except where he makes obvious slips of the pen (Senesino
for example sometimes appears as "Sanesino").
Fougeroux was, of course, wrong in supposing that the opera
had been a considerable spectacle for only three years. The Royal
Academy had opened in 1720; but he may be dating its great days
from Faustina's arrival in the spring of 1726. Of the three operas
he attended, 'Siroe' (which he must have seen first) had eighteen
performances between 17 February and 27 April, 'Tolomeo'
seven between 30 April and 21 May, 'Admeto' three between 25
May and 1 June. The first two were new works, the third a revival.
The three leading singers, Senesino, Faustina and Cuzzoni, require
no introduction. Fougeroux's opinion of their relative merits is
interesting, but he is unlikely to have heard all three in Venice twelve
years earlier. Faustina had sung there in 1716-21, Cuzzoni in 1718-
19; Senesino's last appearances in a Venetian theatre had been
in 1713-14. Fougeroux could have heard the rival prima-donnas
together in 1718-19, when they sang in three operas, including
C. F. Pollarolo's 'Ariodante' on a libretto subsequently adapted
for Handel. The second castrato was Antonio Baldi, whose career
spanned the years 1722-35; he sang in London throughout the last
three seasons of the Royal Academy (1725-8), appearing in fourteen
operas, ten of them by Handel. Giovanni Battista Palmerini was
not a castrato but a second bass; both he and Boschi would have
been called baritones today. Palmerini sang in six London operas
in 1727-8; he had small parts in 'Siroe' and 'Admeto', but was not
in 'Tolomeo'. The only singer not mentioned by Fougeroux was the
English soprano Mrs. Wright, who played the small part of Orinda
in the revival of 'Admeto'. "Santine" was probably Santa Stella,
a successful soprano who married the composer Antonio Lotti.
The salary of £1,600 ascribed to the three principal singers is £400
lower than Deutsch's figure ('Handel, a Documentary Biography',
p. 195). Fougeroux was voicing a common opinion in finding it
exorbitant, and the reports he heard about the instability of the
opera were true. This was the Academy's final season; Fougeroux
heard one of the last three performances.
The most important new evidence concerns Handel's orchestra,
though Fougeroux must be wrong in two respects. His list of instru-

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ments—24 violins, 2 harpsichords, 1 archlute, 3 cellos, 2 double
basses, 3 bassoons, with occasional flutes and trumpets (and horns,
mentioned two paragraphs later)—makes no reference to violas or
oboes, which were certainly present. The former no doubt were
included among the violins. It is possible that Fougeroux wrote
"clairons" by mistake for "hautbois"—trumpets appear in none
of these three operas—or even that he mistook Handel's vigorous
oboes for trumpets. The opera with horns in the overture and final
chorus was 'Tolomeo', and the "morceau de someil" presumably
the hero's 'Tiranni miei pensieri' in the same opera. 'Admeto'
also contains horns; a single flute part appears in 'Admeto' and
'Tolomeo', and two recorders in the latter; 'Siroe' uses none of these
instruments. The Castrucci brothers, Pietro and Prospero, led
Handel's orchestra for many years; they were primarily violinists,
but also played the violetta marina, a variant of the viola d'amore of
their own invention, for which Handel wrote special parts in
'Orlando' (1733).
Fougeroux's account is the only confirmation we have that
Handel used two harpsichords and an archlute in secco recitatives.
Presumably one harpsichord accompanied each singer in dialogue.
The cutting off of the sound of each chord should be noted by
continuo players who like to spray a modern audience with arpeggios.
Fougeroux disapproved because his ear was attuned to the slower,
sustained and declamatory recitative of French opera. Likewise his
statement that there were no middle parts except those supplied
by the continuo instruments was conditioned by his familiarity with
the five-part string writing of the school of Lully. It is perhaps not
surprising that he failed to notice Handel's discreet use of the violas,
so often confined to the main ritornellos. His tribute to the extreme
brilliance of the violin-playing and the "grand fracas" made by the
orchestra as a whole is striking. Comparison with the Paris Opera
must also have been responsible for his criticism of the decorations
in the King's Theatre, both on the stage and in the auditorium.
No doubt the Royal Academy, committed to a huge outlay on singers,
was by this time retrenching on scenery and spectacle; neither of
the two new operas requires anything elaborate—they were probably
given with old sets and costumes—and the Hades scene in 'Admeto',
if it retained its flying Furies of the previous season, cannot have
impressed Fougeroux. A Frenchman used to the spectacle of the
Acade'mie Royale would naturally regard an opera without ballet,
machines, choruses and supers, and wholly dependent on singers,
as little better than a concert in costume. An interesting detail is
the use of a small bell instead of the usual whistle as a signal to the
stage-hands to change the scenery; this was done of course with the
curtain up.
The first concert mentioned by Fougeroux was perhaps that
given at York Buildings on 12 April, with "Vocal and Instrumental

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 [music], particularly several favourite Ballads by Mr Mountfort".
It was given for the benefit of one Carter, and the tickets cost five
shillings. There were others at York Buildings and Hickford's Room
during this period, but most of them seem to have been purely
instrumental, and none fits so well Fougeroux's mention of "des
vaudevilles anglois et allemands". The Great Room in York Build-
ings, Villiers Street, sometimes known as Sir Richard Steele's Great
Room, had been in use for concerts and meetings since the beginning
of the century. The Thursday concert at which the violins of the
opera orchestra appeared and a clergyman played the cello was
probably a meeting of one of the private music clubs, with mixed
professional and amateur membership, that assembled regularly
in taverns—perhaps the Castle Society, which from 1724 met at the
Castle in Paternoster Row and whose orchestra was for some years
led by Prospero Castrucci.
After describing operas and concerts Fougeroux goes on to deal
with the other theatres, Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields,
of which he is decidedly contemptuous. He begins with the startling
statement:
Leur meilleurs comiques comme Benjonnson Scakespeer insultent
Moliere et nos grands auteurs et les pillent toujours. Leur Comique
est sans aucune galanterie, toujours remply d'ordure et de mauvaises
pointes d'esprit . . . Dangereuse ecole pour les femmes et pour la
jeunessse.
He may have been thinking of the comedies of Vanbrugh, Farquhar
and Congreve, several of which were performed at this time. He saw
a number of farces, including John Thurmond's popular "Grotesque
Entertainment" 'Harlequin Doctor Faustus' (given at Drury Lane
on 17 and 29 May), and thought the English dancers pitiable. He
could have seen 'Volpone' and at least five plays by Shakespeare;
the only one he mentions is 'Henry VIII' (Drury Lane, 14 May),
of which he gives a long description. He was impressed by the
costumes and the ceremonial processions, "suivis des trompettes et
des tymbales", but found the play full of death sentences which he
expected to see carried out on stage; "mais il n'a pas plus au poete
de nous donner ce plaisir". He described the theatres as like the
opera house but smaller and less ornamented, with Lincoln's Inn
Fields the prettier of the two. At Drury Lane "Porchestre est tres
garni mais fort mediocre". That at Lincoln's Inn Fields was no
better, and he despised the music it played in 'The Beggar's Opera'.
He saw one of the performances in the original run of this famous
work (first produced on 29 January 1728), with Lavinia Fenton
(later Duchess of Bolton) as Polly.

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 L'opera, qui autrefois n'etoit rien, est devenu depuis trois ans un
•spectacle considerable. Ils ont fait venir d'ltalie les plus belles voix [et]
les plus habiles symphonistes et y ont ajoute ce que I'Allemagne a de
meilleur. Cela leur coute tant qu'on parloit a mon depart de Londres de
la rupture de cet opera. II n'y avoit que six voix, dont trois etoient excel-
lentes, la fameuse Faustine de Venise, la Cuzzoni et Senesino fameux
'Castratte,—deux autres Castrattes, Balbi [sic] et Palmerini, et Boschi
pour la basse, autant bon que peut estre un italien pour cette partie, qui
est tres rare chez eux. J'avois deja entendu a Venise les trois belles voix,
•et comme il y a douze ans elles etoient encore meilleures qu'a present.
JLa Faustine a un gosier charmant et la voix assez grande mais un peu
rude, sa figure et sa beaute sont des plus m^diocres. La Cuzzoni quoique
•d'une voix plus foible a une douceur qui enchante avec des passages divins,
apres la fameuse Santine de Venise qui ne joue plus. Presentement,
PItalie n'a point eu des plus belles voix que les deux femmes: le Senesino
•est tout ce qu'ils ont eu de meilleur, bon musicien, beau gosier et assez bon
acteur. On donnoit a Senesino 1600 pieces ou livres sterlings valent 35000
iFmonoye de France et 1600 pieces a chaques des deux actrices, quoique
l'opera ne se joue que deux fois la semaine, les mardys et les samedys, et
•qu'il cesse pendant Lente. C'est un prix exorbitant et le moyen dont ils
se font service pour enlever tout ce que l'ltalie avoit de meilleur.
L'orchestre etoit compose de vingt-quatre violons conduits par les
•deux Castrucci freres, deux clavessins, dont Indel allemand grand joueur
et grand compositeur en touchoit un, un archilut, trois violoncelles, deux
contrebasses, trois bassons et quelquefois des flutes et des clairons. Cet
orchestre fait un grand fracas. Comme il n'y a point de partie du milieu
les vingt-quatre violons ne jouent ordinairement que le premier et le
second dessus, ce qui est extremement brillant et d'une belle execution.
JL.es deux clavessins [et] l'archilut font les accords et les parties du milieu.
II n'y a qu'un violoncelle, les deux clavessins et l'archilut pour le recitatif.
La musique en est bonne et tout au fait dans le gout italien, a Pexception
de quelques morceaux tendres dans le gout francois. C'est Indel qui a
compose les troix operas que j'ay vu. Le premier etoit Ptolemd Roy
•d'figypte, le second Siro6 Roy de Perse, et le troisieme Admette Roy de
Tessalie. C'etoient d'anciens operas italiens pour les paroles que l'on
avoit traduit en vers anglois a cote de l'italien en faveur des dames.
Comme il n'y a aucun spectacle en danses en decorations en machines et
•que le theatre est d^noue de Chceurs1 et de cette multitude d'acteurs
qui decorent la scene, on peut dire que le nom d'op6ra est mal applique
a ce spectacle, c'est plutot un beau concert sur un theatre.
La salle en est petitte et d'un gout fort mediocre, le theatre assez grand
avec de mauvaises decorations.2 II n'y a point d'amphiteatre, ce n'est
qu'un parterre, ou sont de grands bans ceintrez jusqu'a l'orchestre ou les
hommes et les femmes sont assis pesle-mesle. Les loges sont louees a
l'annee. Au fond de la salle il s'eleve une galerie ceintrde soutenue par
des piliers qui donnent dans le parterre et elevde comme nos secondes
loges. C'est pour la petitte bourgeoisie, on y donne cependant cinq
schelings qui font 5 " mef de France. Les places du parterre sont d'une
demie guinde valent 11' 10. Le Roy a deux loges contre le theatre, il y
vient deux fois avec la Reine. Les princesses etoient vis a vis dans une autre
loge. On bat des mains quand le roy arrive, et on les salue en sortant; il
n'avoit que deux hallebardiers pour toute garde. Les bords du theatre
sont ornez de colones, le longs desquels sont attachez des miroirs avec
des bras et plusieur de bougies, ainsi qu'aux pilastres qui soutiennent la
1
II n'y a qu'un trio ou quatuor i lafinet deux duo dans tout l'opera.
* Dans les changemens de decorations on se sert d'une sonette au lieu d'un siflet.
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galerie du fond de la salle. Au lieu de lustres ce sont de vilains chandeliers
de bois, soutenus de cordes comme on en voit aux danseurs de cordes.
Rien n'est plus vilain, ce sont pourtant des bougies par tout.
Comme vous n'estes pas sectateur de la musique italienne, je n'ose
pas vous dire, Monsieur, qu'excepte le recitatif et la mauvaise maniere
d'accompagner en coupant le son de chaque accord, il y a des ariettes
magnifiques pour 1'harmonie avec des accompagnements de violons qui
ne laissent rien a souhaiter. Les ouvertures de ces ope>as sont des especes
de sonates en fugues fort belles. J'y entendis un morceau de someil imit6
de ceux que vous connoissez dans nos operas. On avoit mesld dans une
de ces ouvertures des corps [sic] de chasse ainsi que dans le Chorus* de la
fin, ce qui faisoit des merveilles.
Les Concerts. Pendant que nous sommes sur la musique, il faut vous
parler des concerts publics de Londres, qui sont peu de chose en com-
paraison des notres. Nous en entendim.es4 un qui se tint dans une salle
basse, toute peinte mais fort noircie, qui sert ordinairement de salle a.
danser; il y a une tribune au bout oil Ton monte quelques marches, c'est
ou se met la musique. On y joua quelques sonates et Ton y chanta des
vaudevilles anglois et allemands: on paye pour ces mauvais concerts cinq
schelings qui valent 5 " 10s. Nous entendim.es encore un autre concert au
premier £tage dans un caff£, ou les violons de 1'opeVa s'exercent tous les
jeudys. II n'y avoit que des allemands qui exdcutent fort bien, mais qui
jouent durement, un entre autres joua tres bien de la flutte allemande.
Nous y vismes aussi un ministre jouer du violoncelle.
Vous serez surpris, Monsieur, de ce que je vais vous dire, que parmy
les gens de qualitez hommes et femmes il y en a peu qui s'attachent a la
musique. On ne scait ce que c'est que de concerter ensemble, tout le
plaisir consiste a bien boire et a fumer; vous scavez, Monsieur, combien
l'occupation de la musique en France detourne la jeunesse de la ddbauche
et de quel commerce elle devient par tous . . .
On y jouoit une espece d'opera comique, appelle l'Opera des gueux,
a cause qu'on y representoit une bande de voleurs des grands chemins
avec leur Capitaine, dont il n'y avoit que deux acteurs de bons et une
fille appellee Fenton assez jolie. L'orchestre est aussi mauvais que l'autre
[at Drury Lane]. Tout est en vaudevilles avec de mechante musique.
On prdtendoit que le poete avoit fait quelque application au gouverne-
ment pr&ent. On y boit a chaque moment, on y fume, et le Capitaine
avec huit femmes qui luy tiennent compagnie dans la prison les baise a.
plusieurs reprises. On alloit le faire pendre au cinquieme acte, mais avec
de l'argent il a l'adresse de se sauver du gibet. C'est par ou l'opera finit.
Je vous ennuyerois de vous parler des contredanses de la fin.
3
Le Chorus est compost seulement de quatre voix.
4
Contre la pompe & feu.

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