John Baptist Grano (c. 1692 – c. 1748) was an English trumpeter, flutist and composer, who worked with George Frederick Handel at the opera house in London's Haymarket.
It details Grano's friendships, love affairs and adventures as he struggles to earn enough money to buy his freedom.
John Ginger writes that the father may have been a regimental trumpeter in the Dutch Guards who travelled to England during the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when James II was overthrown.
He was paid 10 shillings per performance twice a week, playing the rest of the time in salons in Lincoln's Inn Fields or St James's Square, where he earned between two and four guineas an evening.
The earliest record of him as a trumpeter is around 1711, when the Duchess of Shrewsbury hired him to play during a reception in the Lord Chamberlain's apartment at Kensington Palace.
[4] Grano returned to England around March 1720, playing his trumpet and flute compositions in several salons, including in Drury Lane.
[8] These privileges existed in contrast to the squalid "Commons side," where prisoners were held indefinitely and routinely starved to death.