Event Comment: Pepys, Diary: By and by with
Lord Bruncker by coach to his house,
there to hear some
Italian musique: and here we met
Tom Killigrew,
Sir Robert Murray, and
the Italian
Signor Baptista, who hath composed a play in Italian for
the Opera, which T. Killigrew do intend to have up; and here he did sing one one of
the acts. He himself is
the poet as well as
the musician.... This done, T. Killigrew and I to talk: and he tells me how
the audience at his house [
Bridges St.] is not above half so much as it used to be before
the late fire. That
Knipp is like to make
the best actor that ever come upon
the stage, she understanding so well: that
they are going to give her #30 a-year more. That
the stage is now by his pains a thousand times better and more glorious than ever heretofore. Now, wax candles, and many of
them;
then, not above 3 l6s. of tallow: now, all things civil, no rudeness anywhere;
then, as in a bear-garden:
then,
two to three fiddlers; now, nine or ten of
the best:
then, nothing but rushes upon
the ground, and every thing else mean; and now, all o
therwise:
then,
the Queen seldom and
the King never would come; now, not
the King only for state, but all civil people do think
they may come as well as any....That he hath ga
thered our Italians from several Courts in Christendome, to come to make a concert for
the King, which he do give #200 a-year a-piece to: but badly paid, and do come in room of keeping four ridiculous gundilows, he having got
the King to put
them away, and lay out money this way; and indeed I do commend him for it, for I think it is a very noble undertaking. He do intend to have some times of
the year
these operas to be performed at
the two present
theatres, since he is defeated in what he intended in
Moorefields on purpose for it; and he tells me plainly that
the City audience was as good as
the Court, but now
they are most gone