Ristori, who at the same time held the post of composer to the Italian actors, a company that, besides plays, performed also little operas, serenades, intermezzi, &c.  The usual retinue of the King on his visits to Poland included also a part of the French ballet and comedy.  These travels of the artistic forces must have been rich in tragic, comic, and tragi-comic incidents, and would furnish splendid material for the pen of a novelist.  But such a journey from the Saxon capital to Warsaw, which took about eight days, and cost on an average from 3,000 to 3,500 thalers (450 to 525 pounds), was a mere nothing compared with the migration of a Parisian operatic company in May, 1700.  The ninety-three members of which it was composed set out in carriages and drove by Strasburg to Ulm, there they embarked and sailed to Cracow, whence the journey was continued on rafts. [Footnote:  M. Furstenau, Zur Geschichte der Music und des Theaters am Hofe zu Dresden.] So much for artistic tours at the beginning of the eighteenth century.  Frederick Augustus (ii of Saxony and III of Poland, 1733-1763) dissolved the Polish band, and organised a similar body which was destined solely for Poland, and was to be resident there.  It consisted in 1753 of an organist, two singers, twenty instrumentalists (almost all Germans), and a band-servant, their salary amounting to 5,383 thalers, 10 groschen (a little more than 805 pounds).  Notwithstanding this new arrangement, the great Dresden band sometimes accompanied the King to Poland, and when it did not, some of its members at least had to be in attendance for the performance of the solos at the chamber concerts and in the operas.  Also such singers, male and female, as were required for the operas proposed for representation had to take to the road.  Hasse and his wife Faustina came several times to Poland.  That the constellation of the Dresden musical establishment, in its vocal as well as instrumental department, was one of the most brilliant imaginable is sufficiently proved by a glance at the names which we meet with in 1719:  Lotti, Heinichen, Veracini, Volumier, Senesino, Tesi, Santa Stella Lotti, Durastanti, &c.  Rousseau, writing in 1754, calls the Dresden orchestra the first in Europe.  And Burney says in 1772 that the instrumental performers had been some time previously of the first class.  No wonder, then, if the visits of such artists improved the instrumental music of Poland.

From Sowinski’s Les Musiciens Polonais we learn that on great occasions the King’s band was reinforced by those of Prince Czartoryski and Count Wielhorski, thus forming a body of 100 executants.  This shows that outside the King’s band good musicians were to be found in Poland.  Indeed, to keep in their service private bands of native and foreign singers and players was an ancient custom among the Polish magnates; it obtained for a long time, and had not yet died out at the beginning of this century.  From this circumstance, however,