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
Glass harmonica chastened and the dulcet notes of the instrument would be delightful indeed, were they more powerful and articulate; but that we believe the most perfect execution cannot make them. In a smaller room and an audience less numerous, the effect must be enchanting. Though the accompaniments were kept very much under, they were still occasionally too loud." Music for glass harmonica was all-but-unknown from 1820 until the 1930s (although Gaetano Donizetti intended for the aria "Il dolce suono" from his 1835 opera Lucia di Lammermoor to be accompanied by a glass armonica, and Richard Strauss specified use of the instrument