Taking the Oaths: The Directors of the Royal Academy of Music Swear Allegiance to King and Country

Abstract

Early in 1719 plans were advanced for establishing a company by the name of the Royal Academy of Music for the purpose of performing ‘Operas on the English Theatre, in greater perfection than they have hitherto been represented, either in this or any other Country’. In May George I ordered the organizers to ‘prepare a Bill for Our Royal Signature’ to incorporate the Academy by letters patents, and he granted the company £1,000 a year for seven years. The official royal charter establishing the Academy for twenty-one years is dated 27 July 1719. In addition to the Governor of the company (always to be the Lord Chamberlain), the original fourteen directors of the company can be identified from the minutes of the first meetings in November and December. By the time the Academy produced its first opera, Giovanni Porta's Numitore (2 April 1720), the composition of the board of directors had shifted (as indicated in the printed libretto), and seven were new. One of these was John Percival, later 1st Earl of Egmont.