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It is difficult to believe the claims by some contemporary commentators, as well as those of more recent vintage, that the British slave trade was not profitable, for it cannot be denied that the two official companies engaged in the trade for decades. It may have been true that slave trading in itself was not as profitable as other parts of the companies’ business, and/or that profits from such trading constituted only a small or moderate portion of the companies’ total profits. Certainly, the independent traders operating out of ports around Britain, and those sailing from other countries, were not going to do so without the prospect of significant profits, the captains of those ships often being paid in slaves as well as in cash received from trading non-human goods. According to figures readily obtained from the Slave Voyages database, British ships during the first half of the 18th century held 50 per cent of the total Atlantic slave trade, with the independents at 45.5 per cent and the two official companies at 4.5 per cent. The busiest period for the two companies was 1721-6—and that was, coincidentally, the height of the Royal Academy of Music’s success. That collective form of arts patronage, the Royal Academy of Music, also exhibits connections with the slave trade. Founded in 1719 by 63 noblemen and other very wealthy supporters, the Academy had exhausted its capital by the end of the 1727-8 season. By then, 172 men had been directors of or subscribers to the company. In our context the significant fact is that 54 of these subscribers or their close relatives had been RAC investors in 1720. Thus nearly a third of the Academy’s subscribers had a financial interest in the slave trade. Henry Drax was one of those subscribers to the Academy (in 1723). He was part of the Dorset-Wiltshire social circle that included Handel’s friends the 4th Earl of 2016 8 MARCH TO 11 APRIL including: HANDEL ARIODANTE ALEXANDER BALUS BERENICE HANDEL SINGING COMPETITION 2016 LAURENCE CUMMINGS MUSICAL DIRECTOR Contact for information: londonhandelfestival@gmail.com 01460 53500 / 54660 www.london-handel-festival.com 1548 I.S.O Deutschlandsberg-Austria 22nd International Singing Competition Ferruccio Tagliavini Opera singers (1st section -33 years) and voice students (2nd section -24 years) Deutschlandsberg, 14th-21st April 2015 Jury: Juan Pons Chairman Richard Bonynge Andrea de Amici Sung Bin Kim Sabino Lenoci Vittorio Terranova Alberto Triola Information: I.S.O: c/o RUEFA Reisen Frauentalerstaße 8, A-8530 Deutschlandsberg Tel.: +43-(0)664-73142202, www.iso.or.at Email: iso.schubert@aon.at Opera, December 2015
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■  The Drax Hall estate in central Barbados Shaftesbury and the Harris family of Salisbury. He was born probably in 1693. His father Thomas Drax had inherited Barbadian plantations, along with properties in Yorkshire and Hertfordshire, from his uncle. Before 23 December 1719, Henry Drax married his first cousin Elizabeth, the daughter and heir of a baronet. They had three sons and five daughters, and they chose to live at Charborough in Dorset, the seat of Elizabeth’s grandfather General Thomas Erle (1650-1720), who was a Member of Parliament. Drax himself was MP for the nearby borough of Wareham (1718-22) and then represented Lyme Regis (1727-34), a port from which slaving ships had sailed. He was returned for Wareham again in 1734 and held that seat until 1748, and again from 1751 until his death. Drax collected music and long maintained an interest in it, lending scores on occasion to his friends (a letter of 1739 from him to James Harris requests the return of a Handel work). The year before his appointment as secretary to Frederick, Prince of Wales, Drax wrote to Harris in expectation of seeing him ‘in town this winter [;] Hendel’s Messiah will I dare say occasion me that satisfaction’. Handel used his savings and profits from investments in the South Sea Company to fund his own seasons of operas and oratorios. In 1732, a season before the ruinous competition with the Opera of the Nobility began, he cashed in his stocks and placed the money with the Bank of England. In the five seasons from then until 1737 he spent all but £50 of the original £2,300 deposit. The expenses for each opera season during those years were between £9,000 and £11,000, and ticket sales, subscriptions and support from the royal family never fully covered them. Sixty years on we need a different indicator to gauge the slave economy involvement of opera subscribers. By comparing the records of compensation provided to British plantation and slave owners when slavery in British colonies was abolished in the 1830s, now available as the online database Legacies of British Slave-Ownership, with the list of opera subscribers during 1789-94 as given by Milhous, Dideriksen and Hume in the second volume of their Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London, we can ascertain the facts. Given the 40-year difference and the likelihood of purchases and sales of property during that time, and the weakness of matching by name only, we can be less certain that all the correct matches have been made. Of the 438 families who subscribed to the opera in the early 1790s, 113 (26 per cent) appear to have still been owners of Caribbean estates in the 1830s. Opera, December 2015 1549

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It is difficult to believe the claims by some contemporary commentators, as well as those of more recent vintage, that the British slave trade was not profitable, for it cannot be denied that the two official companies engaged in the trade for decades. It may have been true that slave trading in itself was not as profitable as other parts of the companies’ business, and/or that profits from such trading constituted only a small or moderate portion of the companies’ total profits. Certainly, the independent traders operating out of ports around Britain, and those sailing from other countries, were not going to do so without the prospect of significant profits, the captains of those ships often being paid in slaves as well as in cash received from trading non-human goods. According to figures readily obtained from the Slave Voyages database, British ships during the first half of the 18th century held 50 per cent of the total Atlantic slave trade, with the independents at 45.5 per cent and the two official companies at 4.5 per cent. The busiest period for the two companies was 1721-6—and that was, coincidentally, the height of the Royal Academy of Music’s success.

That collective form of arts patronage, the Royal Academy of Music, also exhibits connections with the slave trade. Founded in 1719 by 63 noblemen and other very wealthy supporters, the Academy had exhausted its capital by the end of the 1727-8 season. By then, 172 men had been directors of or subscribers to the company. In our context the significant fact is that 54 of these subscribers or their close relatives had been RAC investors in 1720. Thus nearly a third of the Academy’s subscribers had a financial interest in the slave trade.

Henry Drax was one of those subscribers to the Academy (in 1723). He was part of the Dorset-Wiltshire social circle that included Handel’s friends the 4th Earl of

2016 8 MARCH TO 11 APRIL including: HANDEL ARIODANTE ALEXANDER BALUS BERENICE HANDEL SINGING COMPETITION 2016 LAURENCE CUMMINGS MUSICAL DIRECTOR Contact for information: londonhandelfestival@gmail.com 01460 53500 / 54660 www.london-handel-festival.com

1548

I.S.O Deutschlandsberg-Austria

22nd International Singing

Competition Ferruccio Tagliavini

Opera singers (1st section -33 years) and voice students (2nd section -24 years)

Deutschlandsberg, 14th-21st April 2015

Jury: Juan Pons

Chairman Richard Bonynge Andrea de Amici

Sung Bin Kim Sabino Lenoci Vittorio Terranova

Alberto Triola

Information: I.S.O: c/o RUEFA Reisen Frauentalerstaße 8, A-8530 Deutschlandsberg

Tel.: +43-(0)664-73142202,

www.iso.or.at Email: iso.schubert@aon.at

Opera, December 2015

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