Buononcini--Cuzzoni, Faustina, and Senesino--death of George I--_The
Beggar's Opera_--collapse of the Academy.
The opening performance of the Royal Academy of Music was undistinguished;
it is hard to understand why the noble directors should have begun their
season with _Numitor_, an opera by Porta, a Venetian composer, who is
described in the book of words as "Servant to His Grace the Duke of
Wharton." The Duke of Wharton was not one of the directors. The company,
moreover, was more English than Italian; it included Baldassari,
Durastanti, and a second woman called Galerati, together with Anastasia
Robinson, who afterwards became Countess of Peterborough, Mrs. Turner
Robinson, wife of the organist of Westminster Abbey, Mrs. Dennis, and Mr.
Gordon. _Numitor_ ran for five performances; on April 27 it was succeeded
by Handel's new opera _Radamisto_, in which the same singers took part,
except that Mrs. Dennis did not appear, and Mr. La Garde sang the part of
Farasmane. It is interesting to note that two of the male parts were taken
by women--Radamisto (Durastanti) and Tigrane (Galerati). This looks as if
the management had found it impossible to secure a sufficient number of
Italian _castrati_, who probably demanded exorbitant fees.
_Radamisto_ fared little better than _Numitor_; an enormous crowd came to
the first night, and many were turned away, but the opera was not performed
more than ten times in the season. It was probably above the heads of the
audience, for it is one of Handel's finest works for the stage and a great
advance on any of his previous operas. The only other opera performed was
_Narciso_, by Domenico Scarlatti, which was even less successful than the
others. Chrysander seems to suggest that Scarlatti came to London with the
idea of being a rival to Handel, but it is much more likely that Handel
himself persuaded the Academy to invite the friend of his youth.
The season ended on June 25. _Radamisto_ was printed, and was published by
Handel himself at his own house.
A really serious rival to Handel appeared in the autumn. Lord Burlington
had made the acquaintance in Rome of Giovanni Buononcini, and had heard his
opera _Astarto_. Perhaps he had had enough of Handel after three years of
his close company in Burlington House; in any case he probably thought
himself a better judge of music than Handel. He secured Buononcini for
the Academy, and the season opened on November 19 with _Astarto_. The
dedication to the Earl of Burlington is signed by Paolo Rolli, and no other
author's name is mentioned; but the libretto was really by Apostolo Zeno
(1708). _Astarto_ had ten performances before Christmas, and twenty
afterwards; _Radamisto_ was revived again, but Buononcini established
himself firmly in the favour of a large party. Although Burney speaks very
disparagingly of the music, it is not in the least surprising that the
opera attracted the public. In the first place, it had the advantage of
a magnificent cast of singers--Senesino, Boschi, Berenstadt, Berselli,
Durastanti, Salvai, and Galerati, and this sudden blaze of vocal splendour
would in itself have made the success of any opera, especially of one which
opened the season. Besides, Buononcini's music was pleasing and, after a
far longer stage experience than Handel's, he naturally wrote what singers
enjoyed singing. It must further be added that Buononcini himself was a
striking personality; he had produced operas at Berlin and Vienna, as well
as in various Italian cities, and was a man of the world, accustomed to the
society of courts. Besides, Buononcini was a stranger and a novelty; Handel
was becoming an established institution--indeed, he was well on the way to
becoming an English composer.
The same singers, with the addition of Anastasia Robinson, appeared in the
season of 1721-22. A curious experiment was tried in _Muzio Scevola_,
of which the first act was composed by Filippo Mattei, the second by
Buononcini and the third by Handel, each act having an overture and
concluding chorus. Some biographers have supposed that this was intended to
be a trial of strength, and that the contest resulted in the acknowledged
triumph of Handel; but Burney is probably right in saying that the
collaboration was merely a device to save time in getting the opera ready,
and Burney further points out that Buononcini's position remained as strong
as ever. It was in fact due to Buononcinci's next two operas, and not to
Handel's, that the Academy was able to declare a dividend of seven per
cent.
Handel's _Floridante_ (December 9, 1721) had a moderate success only, and
against Handel's one opera (except for a few performances of _Radamisto_ at
the very beginning of the season) Buononcini had three works to his credit.
The following season brought Handel better fortune, and a decline in the
popularity of Buononcini. In November and December, _Muzio Sceaola_ and
_Floridante_ were revived; on January 12, Handel produced a new opera,
_Ottone_, with a new singer, Francesca Cuzzoni, who eclipsed all the other
women singers completely, until after some years she herself was driven
into eclipse by her historic rival Faustina Bordoni.
_Ottone_ contains one number at least which is familiar to everyone who
knows the name of Handel--the gavotte at the end of the overture. This
spirited piece of music won popularity at the outset, and even to-day it
is probably the best known melody of Handel, after the "Harmonious
Blacksmith." But the real success of _Ottone_ was made by Cuzzoni.
How Cuzzoni came to be engaged at the opera is not clear. Handel cannot
possibly have ever heard her sing; it has been suggested that she was
engaged by Heidegger. She was about twenty-two, and had made her first
appearance at Venice in 1719, after which she sang in various Italian
theatres. She had a voice of extraordinary range, beauty, and agility; she
was equally accomplished both in florid music and in airs of a sustained
and pathetic character, and she was never known to sing out of tune. In
appearance she was anything but attractive: she was short, squat, and
excessively plain-featured. She was uneducated and ill-mannered, impulsive
and quarrelsome. Her arrival in London was delayed for some reason, so
the management sent Sandoni, the second harpsichord-player, to meet
her, probably at Dover. On the way to London they were married; Sandoni
doubtless had an eye to the money which she was to earn.
Her first air in _Ottone_, "Falsa imagine," fixed her reputation as an
expressive and pathetic singer (Burney); she had at first refused to sing
it, on which Handel remarked to her, "Madame, je sais que vous êtes une
véritable diablesse, mais je vous ferai savoir, moi, que je suis Béelzebub,
le chef des diables," seized her round and waist, and threatened to throw
her out of the window. Handel had similar trouble with Gordon, the English
singer who came in for a small part in _Flavio_, which was given on May 14.
Gordon found fault with Handel's method of accompanying, and threatened to
jump on the harpsichord.
"Oh," replied Handel, "let me know when you will do that, and I will
advertise it; for I am sure more people will come to see you jump than to
hear you sing."
Two more operas by Buononcini were given, but his relations with the
Academy were not very cordial. He had been taken up by the Marlborough
family, and was commissioned to compose the funeral anthem for the burial
of the great Duke in June 1722. On May 16, 1723, Mrs. Pendarves informed
her sister that the young Duchess had settled £500 a year for life on
Buononcini, "provided he will _not_ compose any more for the ungrateful
Academy, who do not deserve he should entertain them, since they don't know
how to value his works as they ought." The contract, however, seems not to
have been carried out by the composer. Mrs. Pendarves evidently took the
news from the day's issue of a weekly journal, adding only the name of the
Duchess, which the paper had suppressed. What the paper tells us is that
the Academy had not engaged Buononcini for the coming season.
Senesino and Cuzzoni had made life impossible for the other singers.
Durastanti retired to the Continent; Anastasia Robinson left the stage, and
married her old admirer Lord Peterborough. Senesino and Cuzzoni, however,
were indispensable to the success of the opera, and probably the ridiculous
affectations of the one and the abominable manners of the other were not
without their attraction to a public which could enjoy all the pleasure of
gossiping about them without having to put up with them at close quarters.
The season of 1723 began in November with Buononcini's _Farnace_ and
Handel's _Ottone_; in January 1724 a new opera, _Vespasiano_, by Attilio
Ariosti, was given, and ran for nine successive nights. Ariosti was never
a very troublesome rival to Handel; he was a man of amiable character, and
apparently quite content to remain aloof from the party politics of the
opera-house. On February 14, Handel produced his _Giulio Cesare_, one of
his finest dramatic works; it has been revived with considerable success
in recent years, partly owing to the fact that modern audiences are more
familiar with the episode of Caesar and Cleopatra than with the subjects of
Handel's other operas. _Giulio Cesare_ had the advantage of a strong cast;
Senesino sang the title part, with Berenstadt and Boschi to support him,
and the women included Cuzzoni, as well as Durastanti and Mrs. Robinson,
who had not yet quitted the opera company.
Another masterpiece of Handel's, _Tamerlano_, inaugurated the autumn season
of 1724 in October; in December appeared Ariosti's _Artaserse_, in January
_Giulio Cesare_ held the stage till the production of another Handel opera,
_Rodelinda_, which came out on February 13, and ran for thirteen nights.
Two more operas, by Ariosti and Leonardo Vinci of Naples, completed the
season, but it was evidently Handel who scored the greatest triumphs,
unless the honours should more properly go to Cuzzoni, as Rodelinda, and
her brown silk gown trimmed with silver. All the old ladies, says Burney,
were scandalised with its vulgarity and indecorum, "but the young adopted
it as a fashion so universally, that it seemed a national uniform for youth
and beauty."
Cuzzoni created a further sensation in the summer by giving birth to a
daughter. Mrs. Pendarves made much fun of the event. "It is a mighty
mortification it was not a son. Sons and heirs ought to be out of fashion
when such scrubs shall pretend to be dissatisfied at having a daughter;
'tis pity, indeed, that the noble name and family of the Sandonis should be
extinct! The minute she was brought to bed she sang' La speranza,' a song
in _Otho_."
Revivals of _Rodelinda_ and _Ottone_ took place in the following season,
and, in March 1726, Handel produced _Scipio_, in which the famous march was
heard for the first time on the rise of the curtain.
But Cuzzoni's throne was soon to be sharply contested. Ever since 1723 the
directors of the opera had been trying to secure Faustina Bordoni, and at
last, with a promise of £2,500 for the season (Cuzzoni received £2,000),
they succeeded. Faustina was born of a patrician family at Venice in 1700;
she had been brought up under the protection of Alessandro Marcello,
brother of the well-known composer, and had made her debut at Venice at the
age of sixteen. She sang mostly at Venice for several years, and in 1718
she appeared there in Pollaroli's _Ariodante_, along with Cuzzoni herself.
She sang at Munich in 1723, and in the summer of 1725 she went to Vienna,
where she stayed six months, enjoying an extraordinary success. Nearly
forty years afterwards the Empress Maria Theresa recalled with pride how
she herself, at the age of seven, had sung in an opera with Faustina. At
the end of March 1726 she left Vienna for London, where she made her first
appearance, on May 5, in Handel's new opera _Alessandro_, which had been
designed especially to show off both Faustina and Cuzzoni in parts of
exactly equal importance and difficulty. The immediate result was to divide
London society into two parties: young Lady Burlington and her friends
supported Faustina; Cuzzoni's admirers were led by Lady Pembroke. Lady
Walpole succeeded in getting both to sing at her house; neither would sing
in the presence of the other, but the hostess tactfully managed to draw
first one and then the other out of the music-room while her rival
enchanted the guests. Mrs. Pendarves also contrived to be on good terms
with both. She heard Cuzzoni in November privately, or perhaps at a
rehearsal, and writes, "my senses were ravished with harmony." The opera
was expected to begin about the middle of December, "but I think Faustina
and Madame Sandoni [i.e. Cuzzoni] are not perfectly agreed about their
parts." The opening, however, was delayed by the absence of Senesino, who
had gone to Italy and did not return until fairly late in December.
It was probably owing to this fact that opera in English was offered at the
theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where Marcantonio Buononcini's _Camilla_,
first given in London in 1706, was revived by a mainly English cast of
singers. Mrs. Pendarves went to see it, and her criticisms are significant
for the taste of the time. "I can't say I was much pleased with it, I liked
it for old acquaintance sake, but there is not many of the songs better
than ballads."
Faustina--"the most agreeable creature in the world in company"--dined with
Mrs. Pendarves for a small musical party on January 26. On the previous day
there was the first rehearsal of Handel's _Admeto_. It was the moment, says
Burney, of Handel's greatest prosperity and English patronage. _Admeto_
exhibited conspicuously what Dr. Burney called Handel's "science "; it was
evidently considered to be complicated in style, though at the same time
both pathetic and passionate. "Music," says Burney, "was no longer regarded
as a mere soother of affliction, or incitement to hilarity; it could now
paint the passions in all their various attitudes; and those tones which
said nothing intelligible to the heart began to be thought as; insipid as
those of 'sounding brass or tinkling cymbals.'" These words of Burney make
one realise that Handel's London operas must have affected their audiences
almost in the way in which the operas of Wagner startled the audiences of
the nineteenth century. Handel himself, like Wagner, was steadily
developing his own dramatic powers, and it is important to bear in mind
that it was only those marvellous singers of Handel's day, such as
Senesino, Cuzzoni, Faustina, and Boschi, who could inspire him to the
creation of such music as they only were competent to interpret.
_Admeto_ was received with respect, and although the partisans of the
"rival queens" were noisy in their applause, no actual disturbance took
place until Admeto was followed by Buononcini's _Astyanax_ on May 6. On the
first night of the new opera each side did its best to drown the opposite
party's favourite with a chorus of catcalls. The behaviour of the audience
became more and more disgraceful as the opera was repeated, until on the
last night (June 6), when the Princess of Wales was present, Cuzzoni and
Faustina delighted the sporting instincts of the nobility and gentry of
England by indulging in a free fight on the stage.
Five days later George I died suddenly at Osnabruck. George II was crowned
on October 11, to the music of Handel's Coronation Anthems. The opera
season reopened a month later. Apparently the quarrel between Cuzzoni and
Faustina had been patched up; probably neither of them wanted to lose their
English contracts. They appeared together in Handel's _Riccardo Primo_, and
again in _Siroe_ (February 5, 1728), as well as in _Tolomeo_ (April 30),
but the battle seems to have been won by Cuzzoni, who obtained the more
important parts. We hear of no more disturbances; the fact was that the
audiences were too thin to be noisy.
Mrs. Pendarves, always a devoted supporter of Handel, was pessimistic from
the beginning of the season. "I doubt operas will not survive longer than
this winter," she wrote on November 25; "they are now at their last gasp;
the subscription is expired and nobody will renew it. The directors are
always squabbling, and they have so many divisions among themselves that I
wonder they have not broke up before; Senesino goes away next winter, and I
believe Faustina, so you see harmony is almost out of fashion."_Admeto_ was
revived on June 1, 1728; this was Faustina's last appearance, and the last
night of the Royal Academy of Music. The opera was announced for June 11,
but Faustina declared herself indisposed. The opera was shut up and the
company disbanded. Faustina went with Senesino to Paris, and thence to
Venice, where Cuzzoni also made her appearance, and continued in the local
dialect the campaign of slander against Faustina's alleged immoralities.
There were many reasons for the collapse of the opera. It had been carried
on with reckless extravagance, and the noble directors were in all
probability not very expert men of business. The scandalous behaviour of
all concerned in _Astyanax_ may well have caused a falling-off in the
subscriptions. Mrs. Pendarves, who was a lady of unimpeachable conduct,
continued to go to the opera, but she was a serious lover of music and
a personal friend of Handel. The failure of the Academy is generally
attributed to the success of _The Beggar's Opera_, which had been brought
out at Lincoln's Inn Fields on January 29, 1728, and at once took London
by storm. A letter of Mrs. Pendarves, dated January 19, but evidently
continued later, tells us that she went to a rehearsal of _Siroe_: "I like
it extremely, but the taste of the town is so depraved, that nothing will
be approved of but the burlesque. The _Beggar's Opera_ entirely triumphs
over the Italian one." Even Mrs. Pendarves could not help enjoying it, once
she had seen it.
It is probable that Handel himself had contributed to the downfall of the
Academy. Out of the 487 performances given between 1720 and 1728, Handel's
works obtained 245, Buononcini's 108, and Ariosti's 55. The great singers
had drawn the public to listen to Handel's operas, but it is clear from
many contemporary allusions that Handel's music was too severe to be an
attraction in itself, except to cultivated musicians like Mrs. Pendarves.
The same accusations were made against Handel that were made in later years
against Mozart and Wagner--that his operas were noisy and overloaded with
learned accompaniments. The Italian opera was killed, not so much by the
fact that _The Beggar's Opera_ made its conventions ridiculous (for its
conventions could at that time have been ridiculous only to quite unmusical
people), as by the incontestable attraction of the new work itself. It was
witty and outspoken, with abundance of topical satire; its music consisted
of the tunes that everybody knew, and it presented the public with the
irresistible fascinations of Lavinia Fenton, who was soon to become the
Duchess of Bolton.
Handel may well have resented the success of _The Beggar's Opera_, but
the collapse of the Academy was in reality no great disaster for his own
interests. In the first place, he had done very well out of it from a
financial point of view; the noble directors might have lost their
money, but he had been only their paid servant, in which capacity he had
accumulated enough to invest no less than £10,000 of his own in the next
operatic venture. He obviously realised the strength of the position which
he had built up for himself both as a composer and as a man of business.
The most important result of the Academy's career had been to provide
Handel with the opportunity of consolidating his own style as a composer
of musical drama. Like all the court composers of his age he had provided
whatever his patrons required--chamber music, water music, minuets for
court balls, Church music for royal ceremonial; but the music on which his
own heart was set was that of the theatre.