Otho

daughter" it is a mighty mortification it is not a son," wrote Mrs Delany-" she sang 'La Speranza,' a song in Otho. Sandoni had been at an extravagant expense to please that whimsical creature. Amongst other superfluous charges, he had bought a fine looking-glass for the child, and a black lace hood for his wife to see company in. In short, there was more talk about this birth than there was for the Princess of Wales when she gave birth to the Princess Louise a few months before.”

On 12th January 1723 Otho was produced. Nicolò Haym had provided the libretto, indeed, Haym was destined to be the author of the next five Handel operas. For the first time Cuzzoni was heard by a London audience. This stumpy little person strutting and strolling on the stage, enthralled it by the sheer wonder of her voice. Handel had excelled himself with his music-Otho was never surpassed by him in all his English operas-and Cuzzoni bore his notes to the heights of enchantment. All her ugliness, her lack of deportment, her deficient manners, her vanity had fled. The audience rose to her. The boxes stormed her with applause. A man in the gallery, with more enthusiasm than decency, roared "Damme, she has a nest of nightingales in her belly! When the house emptied into the winter's night London knew that the Handel-Bononcini battle had ended. Bononcini, with his dainty tunes, his delicious Italian manners in the salons, had been beaten to his knees. His Griselda was accounted a playful prettiness. But the real art was here.

in

The first night of Otho was decisive in its effects. For the performance on the night following seats changed hands at five guineas each. Anastasia Robinson, although she had sung the opera with Senesino, Boschi the basso, and Berenstadt, was so broken-hearted by the uproar in favour of Cuzzoni that shortly afterwards, at the instigation of the Earl of Peterborough, she retired permanently from the stage. Bononcini, eclipsed, still put up a fighting front. The Handel achievement he judged to be the success of an hour. It worried him but little. He went steadily to work on his opera Erminia, which succeeded Otho at the end of its run, but proved a poor attraction.

1 Mrs Delany, "Life and Correspondence," vol. i. p. 117 et seq.

Handel, meanwhile, prepared an even heavier shot for Bononcini. No sooner had Erminia ended than he was ready with Flavio. He had now reached that stage when he could push out opera after opera with a fecundity peculiar to no other composer. Bononcini began to decline. He withdrew from the Academy, and the Duchess of Marlborough settled upon him £500 a year as her Kapellmeister. He had always been in favour with the Marlborough family, and composed the funeral anthem which had been performed at the interment of the conqueror of Blenheim.

Bononcini's story during the next few years is as follows. There was a club set up by the King's Chapel of vocal and instrumental performers, mostly amateurs, whose object was the cultivation of good music. Steffani had been president of the club, although he did not reside in England, and when he died the members decided to keep the presidency vacant in memory of the great Italian. This annoyed Bononcini intensely, since he considered that the mantle of Steffani was rightfully his. He still continued to be a member of the club, but he sent the committee a composition by a foreign musician which had been printed several years previously, and called it his own. When charged with the fraud Bononcini stormed. The music was his. The club was made up of liars. The argument grew fast and furious, and the only thing to do was to write to the alleged composer at Vienna and discover the truth. But, while the letter was on the way, Bononcini terminated his membership of the club, a guilty man.'

He went down fighting. He crept from salon to salon, a furtive figure, as his popularity waned and his adherents dropped away in scores. The beauty of his little chansonnettes still kept him a pitied and maligned person in some of the best musical circles of the town. He made out a good case, and he received a good hearing. His personality was half his cause, for he had a charm that bore him far.

All through his later years Bononcini had been a mental crook. He borrowed heavily from other composers, and

1 "Earl of Egmont MSS.," vol. i. p. 203.
2 Ibid.

Bononcini's Purloinings

until his last years in London he was never found out. The ignorance of the English public-even the English musical public-was largely responsible for that. England had at this time a splendid isolation in music, due largely to the conditions then existing, but due scarcely less to her own musical apathy. Handel had destroyed this isolation to some extent by his importation of the best talent from all over the Continent.

Bononcini with the simple sweetness of his Italian airs had assisted the movement. But by it he fell; his purloinings were discovered. Eventually, with a view to regaining favour, he presented the Academy of Ancient Music with a Madrigal in five voices, but three years later it was discovered that the piece was by Antonio Lotti, and had been published at Venice twenty-three years before. He returned the kindness of the Duchess of Marlborough with sharp practice. After enjoying her £500 per annum for a period of years, he used to entertain her with concerts which she accepted, not imagining that he would bring her in a bill at last to pay the performers, some of whom were promised three guineas a day.' The Duchess paid these accounts with demur, and Bononcini aggrieved, his vanity wounded, left her, and got up a scheme to run a musical meeting at York Buildings in rivalry to the

opera.

So he came down by chicanery and subterfuge, an artist whose reputation had become threadbare by his own rough usage, a great melodist gone stale. A proud man whom, if he had valued himself less, the world would have esteemed more."

For some time longer he clung to the old haunts. A broken figure, with still some of the vicious Italian spirit left in him, for, by circular, propaganda and otherwise, he vainly sought to tear down Handel.

But the glories had departed. Misfortune and melancholy became his constant companions. At one time all things had been in his favour; even Cuzzoni, who carried his banner high, now also turned against him. In his Calpurnia, which

1 Earl of Egmont MSS.," vol. i. p. 202.
2 Ibid.

was his last London opera, she had been superb. By the simplicity and finesse of her singing she made people forget the follies, which had become the scandal of the whole metropolis.' Society had fought for Bononcini till he cheated it. Indeed, he had been the soul of Italy in London, where Italy was deemed the fount of all true melody. But he pawned the title for cheap and artless fraud.

A few years still he lingered. Then he went to Paris with Berenstadt, a dead star dropping out in the dark.

1 Gaetano Berenstadt, Letter in the Liceo at Bologna.

CHAPTER X

ANXIOUS DAYS AT THE ACADEMY

WHEN 1724 dawned, a new apathy was apparent in London with regard to music. London had of late been spoiled by too many good things. The Academy had raised the level of English music to a height it had never attained before. Europe now turned envious ears to the echoes of melody that came from England. Radamisto, Muzio Scevola, Rinaldo were being given in Europe, and the singers one by one were throwing off the shackles of Venice and Munich, and seeking London engagements.

London grew blasé in a surfeit of rich composing. It needed a sensation to keep its interest primed. The conflict between Handel and Bononcini had offered that sensation, and an advertisement fruitful to the box-office. Now Bononcini had crept away to his little coteries, and his behaviour suggested-even if he would not admit the factthat Handel was master of British opera.

Not that the Academy was making profits. Its direction had been too extravagant. Heidegger had enjoyed having the money to spend, and he spent it with the zeal of an enthusiast. There was no commercial man on the Board who worried unduly about balance-sheets.

Heidegger was doing well out of his masquerades, which were usually held at the King's Theatre, Haymarket. They had long since developed into rather scandalous orgies, and, as such, were highly remunerative. At a big supper given in connection with the masquerades, Heidegger was challenged on the grounds of his nationality. What right, they told him, had he to come here and set up a carnival of vice and make a fortune out of it when he was a foreigner! Heidegger, as always, was frank and to the point. "I was born a Swiss,"