Fourth Earl of Orford in Schomberg House, Pall Mall, London - late May, 1786, at night
from Letter from Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, 29 May 1786, page 382:
Curiosity carried me to a great concert at Mrs. Cosway’s t’other night—not to hear Rubinelli, who sung one song at the extravagant price of ten guineas, and whom for as many shillings I have heard sing half a dozen at the Opera House; no, but I was curious to see an English Earl [Earl Cowper] who had passed thirty years at Florence, and is more proud of a pinchbeck principality and a paltry Order from Wirtemberg, than he was of being a peer of Great Britain, when Great Britain was something.
Fourth Earl of Orford, Letter from Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, 29 May 1786. In Mrs. Paget Toynbee (ed.), The Letters of Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford, volume 13 (Oxford, 1905), p. 382. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1534785185158 accessed: 1 December, 2024
Listeners
Listening to
hide composers| A song | performed by Giovanni Rubinelli |
Experience Information
| Date/Time | late May, 1786, at night |
| Medium | live |
| Listening Environment | in the company of others, in private, indoors |
Notes
Maria Cosway (née Hadfield) (1760–1838), history painter and educationist, organized extremely fashionable concerts for several years following her marriage to the artist Richard Cosway (bap. 1742, d. 1821). The couple moved to Schomberg House, Pall Mall, in 1784.