We do not now think of Handel in connection with the opera. To the
modern mind he is so linked to the oratorio, of which he was the father
and the consummate master, that his operas are curiosities but little
known except to musical antiquaries. Yet some of the airs from the
Handel operas are still cherished by singers as among the most beautiful
songs known to the concert-stage.
In 1720 Handel was engaged by a party of noblemen, headed by his Grace
of Chandos, to compose operas for the Royal Academy of Music at the
Haymarket. An attempt had been made to put this institution on a firm
foundation by a subscription of £50,000, and it was opened on May 2d
with a full company of singers engaged by Handel. In the course of eight
years twelve operas were produced in rapid succession: "Floridante,"
December 9, 1721; "Ottone," January 12, 1723; "Flavio" and "Giulio
Cesare," 1723; "Tamerlano," 1724; "Rodelinda," 1725; "Scipione," 1726;
"Alessandro," 1726; "Admeto," 727; "Siroe," 1728; and "Tolommeo," 1728.
They made as great a _furore_ among the musical public of that day as
would an opera from Gounod or Verdi in the present. The principal airs
were sung throughout the land, and published as harpsichord pieces; for
in these halcyon days of our composers the whole atmosphere of the land
was full of the flavor and color of Handel. Many of the melodies in
these now forgotten operas have been worked up by modern composers, and
so have passed into modern music unrecognized. It is a notorious fact
that the celebrated song, "Where the Bee sucks," by Dr. Arne, is taken
from a movement in "Rinaldo." Thus the new life of music is ever growing
rich with the dead leaves of the past. The most celebrated of these
operas was entitled "Otto." It was a work composed of one long string of
exquisite gems, like Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and Gounod's "Faust." Dr.
Pepusch, who had never quite forgiven Handel for superseding him as the
best organist in England, remarked, of one of the airs, "That great bear
must have been inspired when he wrote that air." The celebrated Madame
Cuzzoni made her _début_ in it. On the second night the tickets rose
to four guineas each, and Cuzzoni received two thousand pounds for the
season.
The composer had already begun to be known for his irascible temper.
It is refreshing to learn that operatic singers of the day, however
whimsical and self-willed, were obliged to bend to the imperious genius
of this man. In a spirit of ill-timed revolt Cuzzoni declined to sing
an air. She had already given him trouble by her insolence and freaks,
which at times were unbearable. Handel at last exploded. He flew at the
wretched woman and shook her like a rat. "Ah! I always knew you were
a fery tevil," he cried, "and I shall now let you know that I am
Beelzebub, the prince of de tevils!" and, dragging her to the open
window, was just on the point of pitching her into the street when,
in every sense of the word, she recanted. So, when Carestini, the
celebrated tenor, sent back an air, Handel was furious. Rushing into the
trembling Italian's house, he said, in his four- or five-language style:
"You tog! don't I know better as yourself vaat it pest for you to sing?
If you vill not sing all de song vaat I give you, I vill not pay you ein
stiver." Among the anecdotes told of Handel's passion is one growing out
of the composer's peculiar sensitiveness to discords. The dissonance
of the tuning-up period of an orchestra is disagreeable to the most
patient. Handel, being peculiarly sensitive to this unfortunate
necessity, always arranged that it should take place before the
audience assembled, so as to prevent any sound of scraping or blowing.
Unfortunately, on one occasion, some wag got access to the orchestra
where the ready-tuned instruments were lying, and with diabolical
dexterity put every string and crook out of tune. Handel enters. All
the bows are raised together, and at the given beat all start off _con
spirito_. The effect was startling in the extreme. The unhappy _maestro_
rushes madly from his place, kicks to pieces the first double-bass he
sees, and, seizing a kettle-drum, throws it violently at the leader of
the band. The effort sends his wig flying, and, rushing bareheaded to
the footlights, he stands a few moments amid the roars of the house,
snorting with rage and choking with passion. Like Burleigh's nod,
Handel's wig seemed to have been a sure guide to his temper. When things
went well, it had a certain complacent vibration; but when he was out of
humor, the wig indicated the fact in a very positive way. The Princess
of Wales was wont to blame her ladies for talking instead of listening.
"Hush, hush!" she would say. "Don't you see Handel's wig?"
For several years after the subscription of the nobility had been
exhausted, our composer, having invested £10,000 of his own in the
Haymarket, produced operas with remarkable affluence, some of them
_pasticcio_ works, composed of all sorts of airs, in which the
singers could give their _bravura songs_. These were "Lotario,"
1729; "Partenope," 1730; "Poro," 1731; "Ezio," 1732; "Sosarme," 1732;
"Orlando," 1733; "Ariadne," 1734; and also several minor works. Handel's
operatic career was not so much the outcome of his choice as dictated
to him by the necessity of time and circumstance. As time went on, his
operas lost public interest. The audiences dwindled, and the overflowing
houses of his earlier experience were replaced by empty benches. This,
however, made little difference with Handel's royal patrons. The king
and the Prince of Wales, with their respective households, made it
an express point to show their deep interest in Handel's success.
In illustration of this, an amusing anecdote is told of the Earl of
Chesterfield. During the performance of "Rinaldo" this nobleman, then
an equerry of the king, was met quietly retiring from the theatre in the
middle of the first act. Surprise being expressed by a gentleman who
met the earl, the latter said: "I don't wish to disturb his Majesty's
privacy."
Handel paid his singers in those days what were regarded as enormous
prices. Senisino and Carestini had each twelve hundred pounds, and
Cuzzoni two thousand, for the season. Toward the end of what may be
called the Handel season nearly all the singers and nobles forsook him,
and supported Farinelli, the greatest singer living, at the rival house
in Lincoln's Inn Fields.