Music of Philadelphia and actress. Benjamin Franklin was also a musician, a guitar teacher and inventor of musical instruments like the glass armonica. In 1784 Andrew Adgate organized the Institution for the Encouragement of Church Music, renamed the Uranian Academy (1787–1800). The school was the center of the city's choral music scene during the latter part of the 18th century. The earliest known performance of a musical drama in Philadelphia was Colley Cibber’s "Flora, or Hob in the Well", a ballad opera performed by a touring opera company from England in 1754. In 1757 Francis Hopkinson mounted an elaborate production of Thomas Arne’s
Marianne Davies Marianne Davies Marianne Davies (1743 or 1744, England – c. 1818) was an English musician, and the sister of the classical soprano Cecilia Davies. She was a singer who also played flute and harpsichord. In 1762 she became the first person to publicly perform on the glass harmonica (also known as the armonica), an instrument consisting of variously sized and tuned glass bowls that rotate on a common shaft, played by touching the spinning glass with wet fingers. She toured in concerts with her sister, performing in Dublin (1763), London, and on the Continent where the two girls became acquainted