Royal Academy of Music (opera company)

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The Royal Academy of Music was an opera company that in 1719 London under the auspices I. George was founded. This opened a permanent Italian opera, which attracted the most famous European vocal soloists of the time to England. The venue was the King's Theater on London's Haymarket. While Johann Jacob Heidegger took over the commercial management, Georg Friedrich Händel became musical director of the Royal Academy of Music and composed a number of operas for them, for example Radamisto (1720), Giulio Cesare (1724) and Rodelinda (1725).

In 1728 the company dissolved again as a result of economic failures. Last but not least, John Gay and Johann Christoph Pepusch contributed to this with The Beggar's Opera , a satire on the Italian opera seria .

After a season break, Heidegger and Handel then founded the New Academy or Second Academy and played in the Haymarket Theater in this way until 1734. Then the second academy also dissolved, Handel moved to the Coventgarden Theater, and Heidegger rented the King's Theater to the Opera of the Nobility .

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  • Carl Dahlhaus, Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht (Ed.): Brockhaus Riemann Musiklexikon , Schott, Mainz 1979
  • Carole Taylor: opera companies in: Landgraf, Annette and Vickers, David: The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia , Cambridge University Press 2009, ISBN 978-0521881920 , pp. 449ff.