Some of this is true. Corbetta certainly followed Charles II to England in
1660 and he was granted various franchises to organize games of chance in
London. These are documented in the Official State Papers for the relevant
period.
The bit about the elders petitioning the King to send him back to France
seems to me to be apocryphal. Gambling was
endemic in royal circles - not just in England but also in France I believe.
He went back and forth to France regularly
during 1660-1681. He was probably obliged to leave England in March 1673
when the Test Act was signed by Charles II requiring every office holder at
Court to take Communion in the Church of England. Presumably Corbetta was
Catholic. But he was back by the end of 1674 when he was involved in the
production of the play "Calisto" in which various members of the royal
family took part.
The obituary does say that Charles granted Corbetta a pension and found him
a wife. I haven't been able to find any record of the marriage. Without
knowing the date it is difficult to trace records of the marriage which
would probably have been conducted according to Catholic rites.
I am currently working on a detailed biography of Corbetta but is is often
the way - it keeps stalling.
MOnica
----- Original Message -----
From: "gary" <magg...@sonic.net>
To: "lutelist" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2014 8:59 AM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: De Visee
This may be apocryphal, but I remember having read that Corbetta taught
young Charles II in France after the Queen Mother fled there with him to
avoid Cromwell and, after the restoration, Charles brought Corbetta to
England. While in France Corbetta had acquired the franchise for an
Italian game of chance similar to roulette which he brought with him to
England. After a while in England, Corbetta's gambling franchise became so
successful that the young nobles of England were gambling away their
fortunes and their elders petitioned the king to send Corbetta back to
France. Charles gave in to their petition, but not before giving Corbetta
a large some of money and a wife to take with him.
I've often wondered if the introduction of gambling as a past time of the
wealthy may have been a factor in the disappearance of the soft-voiced
instruments (the lutes, plucked keyboards, gambas, recorders, etc.) in the
eighteenth century and their replacement by heavier, high tensioned string
instruments and brass wind instruments etc. It seems that as long as music
and dancing was the past time of the wealthy, said wealthy maintained
musicians as part of their household staffs, but that all changed when
gambling became the order of the day putting everybody out of work. In
response the musicians invented the concert hall playing for all and
sundry who could afford a ticket or subscription. Of course, then the idea
would have been to put as many rear ends in as many seats as possible
making the louder instruments the preferred instruments. This idea may
have occurred to me while I sat at the back of an audience of 300
struggling and failing to hear a solo lute concert I paid $40 to attend.
Remember Diana Spencer (Lady Di) was heading for a casino when she had
that car accident that took her life.
Gary
On 2014-03-02 13:22, Monica Hall wrote:
Many many thanks for all this fascinating information. Jourdan must
have been quite an important person in Louis' household. I have only
one
comment - Corbetta died in 1681 so he can't have succeeded Jourdon in
1695
and in any case he spent most of his last 20 years in England although he
visited France again on a number of occasions. Perhaps he gave Louis a
few
master classes when he was in Paris.
Best
Monica
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