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GARRICK, David (1717-1779). Autograph letter signed to Charles Burney Naples, 5 February 1764, 4 pages, 4to , including integral address panel (addressed to 'maitre de musique'), (a few restored losses affecting text, some wear and browning at folds). Provenance : the Albin Schram Collection.
GARRICK, David (1717-1779). Autograph letter signed to Charles Burney Naples, 5 February 1764, 4 pages, 4to , including integral address panel (addressed to 'maitre de musique'), (a few restored losses affecting text, some wear and browning at folds). Provenance : the Albin Schram Collection. 'I fear ... good musick is ye needle in a bottle of hay': Garrick on the state of music in Italy, on performances by Gabrielli and Caffarelli, and on Neopolitans. With dampened spirits due to Mrs Garrick's rheumatism, Garrick offers the musician and writer Charles Burney a damning report on Naples' citizens ('they are literally & figuratively a Race of Thieves ... all pantomimers from ye Prince to ye Beggar ...') and on the 'bad taste' of music, which he feels lacks 'simplicity or pathos'. He has heard Gabrielli sing, and although 'transported' by her 'astonishing powers', feels 'she is always ye same ... wanting that nice feeling of ye passions ... she cannot give that variety, & that peculiar pleasure which alone can support the tediousness of an Opera'. However Garrick is deeply affected by attending a 'ceremony of making a nun, she was ye daughter of a duke ... and to crown ye whole the first part was sung by ye famous Caffarelli , who tho old ... touch'd me ... ye first time I have been touch'd since I came into Italy'. About to set off to experience the carnivals in Rome and theatres of Bologna and Venice, Garrick intends to report back, but tells his friend ' you will get little' by journeying to Italy. The Garricks made a Grand Tour in September 1763, and in 1764 a tour from Lyons to Turin, Rome and Naples; Garrick was received as a celebrity, and when in Naples was guest to the expatriate English nobility.