Composer of Italian Operas
Composer of Italian Operas
The Italian Opera came to London
The Royal Academy of Music
Successes and Collapse of the Academy
Beggar’s Opera
The Second Academy
Opera of the Nobility
Composer of Italian Operas
However probably Handel had come mainly to London because he hoped to be able to carry out
his opera plans there. And there one seemed to have waited for him. His sensational success with
the performance of his opera Rinaldo, composed for The Queen’s Theatre in 1711, was for a long time
in all mouth, and it came until 1717 in each season to several successful revivals.
The Italian Opera came to London
Italy was already in 17
th century a favoured place of residence for wealthy members of the English aristocracy,
and one of the most popular entertainments were performances of operas. Such amusements one wanted
to have also in London.
1704-1705 Sir John Vanbrugh built the “Queen's Theatre” at the Haymarket in London. Here the
Italian opera was established. - On 23 January 1708 Henry Grey, 1st Marques of Kent, at that time
Lord Chamberlain, gave exclusive rights to the Queen's Theatre to perform operas. - Beyond that
this theatre became place for further events.
The Royal Academy of Music
In the winter of 1718/19 the Royal Academy of Music, a joint-stock undertaking for the
promotion of Italian opera in London, had been founded, with the King himself investing £ 1000 in
shares.
Handel now had his hands full, at first as sole musical director, but later working alongside
Attilio Ariosti and Giovanni Bononcini. He had to live in London once more. His tasks were so
urgent and diverse that he had to put off for the second time his long-planned visit to Halle. It
was not until May 1719 that he made the trip to Germany, probably in the retinue of the King, who
was once more taking himself off to Hanover. Handel had been commissioned by the Governor of the
Royal Academy to engage singers for the coming opera season. He went to Dresden, where many
artists, the best in Europe, had gathered for the coming resplendent festivities on the occasion of
the wedding or the son of the Saxon Elector with Archduchess Marie Josepha, daughter of the Emperor
of Austria. Handel naturally made a stopover in his native town of Halle.
We know little about his activities in Dresden. Probably he again met his friend Telemann,
who had been attracted by this spectacular artistic occasion, and there is a report that the "English King’s musical director Handel, who played for His Royal Majesty and His Highness the
Royal Prince,” received 100 ducats (Förstemann). His negotiations with various artists seem to
have passed off successfully and he was able to engage Margherita Durastante, who had sung the
title-role in Agrippina in Venice in 1709, and Senesino Francesco Bernardi, the most famous
castrato of his time, and others to sing in London. His return journey was made via Hanover again
and from there, presumably in the King’s retinue, he reached London at the end of 1719.
Successes and Collapse of the Academy
The Academy’s first season opened on 2 April 1719 with Giovanni Porta’s opera Numitore. On 27
April, in the presence of the King and the Prince of Wales, the premiere of Handel’s Radamisto HWV
12 took place. It was a gigantic success, which seemed to confirm once and for all the commanding
position of the foreign composer in London. But it was not to be expected of Handel that he could
produce all the music that the Academy needed, especially since his journey had swallowed up much
of his spare time. The Academy directors could not afford to take any risks and no doubt mindful of
the case of Vienna, where three composers – Johann Joseph Fux, Antonio Caldara and Francesco
Bartolomeo Conti - were simultaneously at work, they imported from Italy another famous composer,
Giovanni Bononcini. At first this only enhanced the colorfulness of the opera repertoire. The
famous Italian brought in further success, as was shown at the very beginning of the second season,
which opened on 19 November 1720 with his Astarte. But what began as an artistic emulation between
two quite evenly matched opera composers, was doomed by the fanaticism of their respective
supporters, who hardened into bitterly opposed factions with political animosities, to degenerate
into rivalry and intrigue, into which the two composers were inevitably drawn.
Handel’s typical tenacity resulted in his carrying off the laurels with operas like Giulio
Casare HWV 17, which was given its premiere on 20 February 1724, and Rodelinda HWV 19, first
performed on 20 January 1725. This only made him even more detested by Bononcini’s supporters.
Among them were influential circles of the aristocracy, who only saw in Handel the former musical
director to the Hanoverian King they hated. For a time they were able to include in their ranks
even the Prince of Wales, the future King George II, who was also at odds with his royal father.
To all this were added other motives, not least aspirations towards the creation of a
national English opera, which were naturally directed against the Italian opera or at least against
opera sung in Italian. On top of all this came difficulties caused by professional jealousies,
openly flaunted on the stage, between the singers under contract, and especially between Francesca
Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni. This aggravated Handel’s already dire predicament. The Academy was
faced with increasing financial problems and after the premiere of the Beggar’s Opera by John Gay
und Johann Christoph Pepusch at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 29. January 1728, the
Academy’s days were numbered. It pressed on with the ninth season but this closed earlier than
usual, on 1. June 1728.
Beggar’s Opera
John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera was directed against politicians such as Robert Walpole and
also against the kind of the Italian opera seria represented by Handel. The persons of the action
were taken from the London underworld. Their dialogues are unpolished, the music consists of
popular ballads and familiar tunes.
The German composer Johann Pepusch living in London was the leader of the small orchestra. He
wrote an overture and orchestrated the gleaned music pieces, including the march from Handel’s
Rinaldo. The success of the opera was so large that it found numerous imitators.
The Second Academy
The Beggar’s Opera had serious consequences and a longer-term effect than Handel could
realise or was willing to concede. In particular he seems not to have noticed the change of taste
that had taken place in a large number of the leading intellectual and social figures. He looked
around for a new ally for his new opera plans and found one in Heidegger. The two men now founded,
on the ruins as it were of the Royal Academy of Music, a new opera company financed by their own
capital.
The material prerequisites seemed to be assured to them in so far as the existing
appurtenances - scenery, costumes, instruments and other effects - were made available on loan by
the General Assembly of the Royal Academy. But all the leading, crowd-pulling singers had abandoned
the sinking ship of the Academy and had already left England. Handel had to collect a new ensemble,
for which purpose he travelled to Italy in February 1729.
After Cuzzoni had bluntly refused, and since Faustina Bordoni, who had meanwhile married
Johann Adolf Hasse, was no longer available, and Senesino was only willing to return to London on
terms unacceptable to Handel, the following singers were finally engaged: the soprano-castrato
Antonio Bernacchi, who had won recognition as a good singer in Italy but did not appeal so well to
London audiences; Francesca Bertolli, whose physical attractions more than made up for her vocal
inadequacies; Antonia Margherita Merigi, a deep contralto; Anna Strada del Pô, a worthy replacement
for Cuzzoni but so ugly that audiences called her “the pig”; Annibale Pio Fabre, tenor, together
with his wife, and Johann Gottfried Riemschneider, bass, a former schoolmate of Handel from
Halle.
News of his mother’s declining health caused Handel to stay in Halle for two weeks on his return journey. Once more in London he threw himself into the work of preparing for the new opera season, which opened on 2 December 1729 with his new opera Lotario HWV 26. The premiere and the nine repeat performances were no marked successes nor did his next opera, Partenope HWV 27, fare any better. The season struggled to an end with revivals of Giulio Cesare and Tolomeo and the pasticcio Ormisda. Rock-bottom only seemed to have been passed when thanks to the intervention of Francis Colman and - of all people - Owen McSwiney, Senesino was persuaded to return to the fold. In the next season he sang the title role in Handel’s new opera Poro HWV 28. The audience was enthusiastic, the premiere was followed by fifteen repeat performances within a few weeks and revivals of Rodelinda and Rinaldo brought the two entrepreneurs the financial gains they had hoped for.
Handel felt himself confirmed in his opera plans, even though failed to keep his audiences up to the same pitch of enthusiasm with his next works Ezio HWV 29, which had its premiere on 15 January 1732, and Sosarme HWV 30, 4 February 1732. By extraordinary exertions and with the production of his opera Orlando HWV 31, premiere on 27 January 1733, he managed to stave off the impending fiasco. But at the end of the second Academy’s fourth season the prospects were bleak. Once again, as ten years previously, artistic convictions, matters of taste, personal inclinations and aversions became merged with political issues.
The antipathy of many English people and leading figures in public life towards the Hanoverian
dynasty had of recent years increased rather than diminished. A strong opposition against the
leading Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, had also sprung up. And all this once more began to be
directed against Handel as the King’s favourite and was further stoked up by the publication of
caricatures, pamphlets and lampoons a stroke was prepared against the “Composer of the Italian
music”, which was destined to find its mark unerringly.
Opera of the Nobility
The Prince gathered wealthy and influential men around him, even people who not long before
could have been counted among Handel’s friends, such as the Earl of Burlington, and founded a rival
enterprise, the “Opera of the Nobility”, with Nicolà Porpora (1686-1768) as composer and musical
director, at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, afore given up by John Rich.
Before the new enterprise had even got under way, it recorded its first victory over Handel:
with the exception of Strada, who stood faithfully by Handel, all the other Italian singers of rank
were lured away. Handel however remained apparently unimpressed by this. First of all in company
with the remainder of his ensemble he accepted an invitation from Oxford University and by adding
to his forces by recruiting singers from the locality performed Esther, Acis and Galatea and
Athalia there.
On the whole these were well received and improved his financial situation. It soon became
clear that Handel’s antagonists had miscalculated in thinking he would beat a retreat from his
operatic academy. On the contrary he succeeded in opening his fifth opera season five weeks before
the rival undertaking. His timing was good since the opening coincided with the King’s birthday and
all the birthday guests, including the Prince of Wales, were more or less obliged to be
present at the performance. In an amazingly short time Handel had been able to recruit new Italia
singers such as Giovanni Carestini (castrato), Maria Caterina Negri (contralto), Carlo Scalzi
(soprano castrato) and Margherita Durastante, who was glad to come back into the fold now that she
no longer had to fear the rivalry of Bordoni. Nevertheless the season ended with a financial
deficit and Heidegger tried to recover at least a part of his investment by making over the
appurtenances to the Opera of the Nobility, which had secured the lease of the Haymarket Theatre.
This was the end of the second Academy, but Handel refused to capitulate. He came to an agreement
with John Rich to alternate opera with the latter’s dramatic performances at the theatre in Covent
Garden.
The depleted ensemble was supplemented with English singers, who soon established themselves
as public favourites, especially at the now more frequent performances of oratorio. Monetary
success however failed to materialise owing to the constant deficit in the opera’s finances. And
even the Opera of the Nobility remained in need of frequent financial injections. And it had to
close in 1737 again. In this time Porpora performed five of his operas: Arianna in Naxo,
Ferdinando, Temistocle, Meride and Arianna.
But no turn for the better came even after Handel had finally succeeded in getting the Prince of Wales to change his attitude towards him with his Wedding Anthem, “Sing unto God” HWV 263, written on the occasion of the Prince’s marriage to the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha in the Chapel Royal of St. James’ Palace on 27. April 1736. The Prince now indeed visited Handel’s performances in Covent Garden and withdrew from the Opera of the Nobility; but the final demise of Handel’s enterprise was inevitable, especially as his health was progressively deteriorating. In April 1737 he no longer found himself able to direct performances because his right arm was paralysed.
On 14 May 1737 the London Evening Post reported: “
The ingenious Mr. Hendell is very much indispos’d, and it’s thought with a Paraletick Disorder,
he having at present no Use of his Right Hand, which, if he don’t regain, the Publick will be
depriv’d of his fine Compositions.” The season however was carried on to the final date - the
opera of the nobility had been compelled to close before Covent Garden. John Mainwaring wrote: “
The upshot put an end for the present to all musical entertainments in Covent Garden and almost
put an end to the author of them. The violence of his passions has made such a disaster operate the
more terribly. The observation that misfortunes never come single was verified in HANDEL. His
fortune was not more impaired than his health and his understanding. His right arm has been useless
to him from a stroke of the palsy and how greatly his senses were disordered at intervals, for a
long time, appeared from an hundred instances, which are better forgotten than recorded.”
At last the sick man allowed himself to be persuaded to take a cure in Aix-la-Chapelle and he
carried it throught in his own way. He sat in the Turkish baths three times as long “
as hath ever been the practice ... His cure, from the manner as well as from the quickness,
with which it was wrought, passed with the Nuns for a miracle.” In very truth Handel in the
middle of November, hardly back from Air-la-Chapelle, seems to have been in complete possession of
his physical and intellectual powers. He went to work with a will and began to set the opera
Faramondo HWV 29. Now, after the final collapse of the opera of the nobility, Heidegger was once
more ready to co-operate with Handel. But for the time being the theatres and other places of
entertainment were closed for six weeks - Queen Caroline had died on 20 November. Handel composed
the Funeral Anthem HWV 264.
