Lot 1289 , Music and dance, 1817-1843, i. John Sale (1758-1827), secretary of the Catch Club; letter to Terrail, unanimously elected a member of the club; 30 Arundel Street, to 28 January 1817

Music and dance, 1817-1843
i. John Sale (1758-1827), secretary of the Catch Club; letter to Terrail, unanimously elected a member of the club; 30 Arundel Street, to 28 January 1817 The Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club was established in 1761, and met at the Thatched House Tavern in St James’s Street. John Sale served as secretary between 1812 and 1827. A history of the Club, still in existence, by Viscount Gladstone, Guy Boas and Harald Christopherson, was published in 1996. For John Sale, singer and conductor, see ODNB. For a reminiscence of Terrail, a counter-tenor, see The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular4 (1852) 208.

ii. Catherine [Kitty] Stephens (1794-1882), singer and actress; letter to Mr Moore, requesting one of his men to bring ‘one pair of the very thin silk stockings’; Friday, c1820

With a cut-down engraving [by Cooke, from a painting in the possession of Thomas Walsh], of Miss Stephens [in the role of Diana Vernon in Rob Roy MacGregor; published by Simpkin and Marshall, stationers, 1820]

Daughter of a London carver and gilder, her opera career lasted from 1812 until 1838, when she married the octogenarian Earl of Essex. Following his death the following year she continued to live at 9 Belgrave Square until her own death in 1882. A testament to her reputation was her reception at court by Queen Victoria, who recorded in her journal that Lord Essex had been ‘excessively pleased’ by her ‘having called up Lady Essex … at the Ball and having spoken to her’.

The addressee is perhaps Joseph Moore (1766-1851), entrepreneur and promoter of musical and choral festivals at Birmingham, Malvern and York (ODNB).

iii. Cipriani Hambley Potter (1792–1871), composer and pianist, 30 York Buildings; letter to W[illiam] Watts, esquire, 45 Cirencester Place, Fitzroy Square; has Watts succeeded with the directors respecting the two additional rehearsal tickets? 20 May 1828

Potter was one of the leading composers and pianists of the 1820s and 1830s. At the end of 1817 he left England to study composition abroad. His first destination was Vienna, where he met Beethoven, who commented favourably on him in a letter of 5 March 1818. He taught at the Royal Academy of Music, the establishment of which was proposed at a meeting at the Thatched House Tavern in 1822; he became principal of the College in 1832.

William Watts, a violinist, was secretary of the Philharmonic Society between 1815 and 1847.

iv. Maria (signs Marietta) Malibran (1808-1836), mezzo-soprano; letter. La tua buona amica, to Monsieur le Chevalier Ferdinando Paër; undated, 1830s
Requests something for La sorella di Minette, who deserves reward being charged with a family
Malibran was born in Paris as María Felicitas García Sitches into a famous Spanish musical family. Her mother was Joaquina Sitches, an actress and operatic singer. Her father Manuel García was a celebrated tenor much admired by Rossini, having created the role of Count Almaviva in his The Barber of Seville. At the age of eight she appeared on stage at Naples with her father in Ferdinando Paër’s Agnese. She made her début at the Paris Opéra in 1828. Triumphs followed in London (Covent Garden début 1833), Naples, Rome, Bologna, Venice, Lucca, and Milan (La Scala début 1834). In 1836 married the Belgian violinist Charles de Bériot with whom she had lived since 1830. Malibran moved to England in 1834 and began to perform in London and the continent. In April 1836 she fell from horse in London, while pregnant, her injuries leading to her death in September, when she collapsed after singing a duet at a Manchester festival.
Ferdinando Paer (1771-1839) was an Italian composer known for his operas. In 1812, he became conductor of the Opéra-Italien in Paris. He retained this post after theRestoration while accepting those of chamber composer to the king and conductor of the private orchestra of the Duke of Orléans. In 1823, he retired from the Opéra-Italien and was succeeded by Rossini.

v. Marie Taglioni (1804-1884), ballet dancer; letter to Monsieur Dupouchet; requests a box and some tickets for this evening; Monday, c1840

With a lithograph of a portrait of Taglioni by François Séraphin Delpech (1778-1825); [Paris, 1832]

Born in Sweden, Taglioni was one of the most celebrated dancers of the romantic ballet, which was cultivated primarily at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London and at the Théâtre de l’Académie Royale de Musique of the Paris Opera Ballet. She is credited with (though not confirmed as) being the first ballerina to truly dance en pointe. It was in Russia after her last performance in the country (1842) and at the height of the ‘cult of the ballerina’, that a pair of her pointe shoes were sold for two hundred roubles, reportedly to be cooked, served with a sauce and eaten by a group of balletomanes.

vi. Joseph Alfred Novello (1810-1896), music publisher; letter to Joshua French, Gentleman of Her Majesty’s Chapels Royal, Windsor; 69 Dean Street Place, 3 May 1843
Thanks to his note they put off their visit to Windsor, as well on account of the rain; encloses a letter of Rossini [not present] ‘whose letters are scarce as he generally write [sic] by his secretary’; many thanks for the facsimiles

The letter was written as Novello embarked on a project to publish cheap music for the mass singing-class movement, enthusiastically supported by those concerned with working-class morality in an age of political and industrial radicalism. In 1842 he published Joseph Mainzer's sight-singing manual Singing for the Million and the weekly Mainzer's Musical Times and Singing-Class Circular.
£150-200

Sold for £280