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This article aims to lay out before the user some very particular information, that is, all references to personnel in the scenic and costume departments that can be found in the librettos prepared for London's Italian operas. The project is book-ended by 1710 (the year in which the first London Italian opera was staged entirely in the Italian language) and the 1800-1801 season (which is taken here as closing the eighteenth century). We should be clear at the outset what this information can be held to tell us. For a start, it is sparse and erratic at best until the arrival of Thomas Lupino as a costume designer in 1774. After this date, the printing of a scene or costume designer's or maker's name in the libretto is a regular occurrence, and does suggest his presence in London, and some association for that season. It does not, however, guarantee that he was present for the whole season, or that he designed or painted every piece of scenery, or made all the costumes used for that season. On the other hand, the lack of a designer's name in a libretto simply means that the scene designer or painter was not mentioned; there may well be other evidence showing that he was active during this period and may have contributed to the staging in question. However, the discussion below is, for the most part, intentionally limited to the information contained in the libretto books, given that they represent a very particular part of the process of staging opera, and present their own particular problems. (1) It might be as well to ask, first, who were the libretto books for? The members of the audience at the King's Theatre and the Pantheon were, for the most part, subscribers who, by the very nature of such a system, were aristocratic, interconnected, and wealthy. They would have had the wherewithal to purchase such librettos, although whether they were always interested in doing so is quite another matter. Subscribing to the opera was, in some cases, a matter of social prestige, but in others, the very interconnectedness of the lives of some of the patrons suggests that it may simply have been a matter of desiring to attend the same events as one's friends, acquaintances, and in some cases, political allies, whatever those events--say, an opera, ridotto, or masquerade--might have been. Even among the aristocracy, fluent Italian could not be--and was not--assumed, and each book, designed for use during the performance, had facing pages, with parallel English and Italian versions of the text. Based on performance runs, we can speculate that there were around 800 different librettos produced for the Italian opera in London, of which copies of some 85 to 90% can be located (Burden and Chowrimootoo, The Italian Opera Aria; A movable feast). Only one or two of many librettos exist, which suggests that their print runs--about which we know little or nothing--must have been small. Purchased on the day of the performance, they cost one shilling--the advertised price from the earliest libretto of a London opera all-sung in Italian printed in 1710 (Mancini)--until the appearance of Calzabigi's libretto for Orpheus and Euridice, which premiered on 12 May 1785, and which was priced at one shilling and sixpence. The lack of an increase before Orpheus was understandable; the annualized inflation rate between 1710 and 1785 was only 0.01%. (2) The rise for Orpheus was also understandable; the libretto contained an expensive engraved frontispiece. (3) However, once the price hike had been implemented on that one occasion, it quickly became permanent, the printer John Almon claiming during the next season to have been forced into it: The Expense for paper and Printing being twice as much as it formerly was, the Proprietor of the Opera-Books is under the Necessity of selling them for Eighteen-pence, the cover Price given at the other Theatre for Play-Books, though uncovered, but in one Language. (Metastasio, Demetrio Introduction) Some of the later librettos that year--Armida (De Gamerra, 1786), L'Inglese in Italia (Badini)--were marked at one shilling and sixpence, and thereafter, this price was the norm. …
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