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
18th century 18th century The 18th century lasted from January 1, 1701 to December 31, 1800 in the Gregorian calendar. During the 18th century, elements of Enlightenment thinking culminated in the American, French, and Haitian revolutions. This was an age of violent slave trading, and global human trafficking. The reactions against monarchical and aristocratic power helped fuel the revolutionary responses against it throughout the century. In continental Europe, philosophers dreamed of a brighter age. For some, this dream turned into a reality with the French Revolution of 1789, though later compromised by the excesses of the Reign of Terror (1793–1794) under Maximilien