A touring celebrity: costs and revenues from Paganini’s Libro mastro

This essay analyses Niccolò Paganini’s Libro mastro (1828-1831) to explore the financial and entrepreneurial aspects of his European concert tours. The manuscript, a hybrid document combining accounts and correspondence, reveals how Paganini managed revenues, expenses, and profits across major cities while operating outside traditional patronage systems. Focusing on Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw, and Paris, the study reconstructs the artist’s income patterns and cost structures, showing how he applied business logic to artistic performance. The findings position Paganini as a pioneer of self-managed celebrity and illuminate broader processes in the commercialization of music during the nineteenth century, demonstrating the value of accounting sources for understanding the intersection of culture, economy, and social transformation.