The hugely discrepant valuations of the alterities of opera and racial slavery - differing additionally between the period under consideration and our own - would seem to preclude their being addressed in the same article. The former has been lauded as the ne plus ultra of human artistic expression. The latter was embraced as an essential economic driver, and morally, spiritually and legally sanctioned by the finest Anglo philosophical, religious and legal minds of the time. That the enslaved decried and rejected their capture and enforced labour - through suicide, rebellion, flight, sabotage and cultural separation - has long been clear. The use of the profits, obtained through the sale of commodities that slave labour produced, to fund musical activities, including opera, has remained hidden. By using the published lists of subscribers (issued as books and fans) for the King's Theatre, Haymarket, and combining that information with what can gleaned from demographic, genealogical and slavery sources, the extent to which the opera was dependent upon families whose wealth lay in plantation ownership or other forms of profit allied to it is established. The proportion is higher than might be supposed. Three families - Lewis, Young and the Heywood sisters - are spotlighted in case studies of box subscribers.
