Bernacchi Dismissed believed in Italian opera, he was the sworn apostle of Italy as owning all the soul of opera. He fought Heidegger over the point. The King of masquerade threatened to withdraw from the Haymarket and leave Handel to "his fantasticks." He declared that he would withdraw the balance of his ten thousand and cut his loss. It was not the loss of his money so much as the loss of Heidegger that perturbed Handel. He could not do without Heidegger, for he never professed to have the instinct of a babe at production. He wanted the stage set, he wanted to sink on to his stool at the instrument, wave his hand, jerk his wig, sweep his singers to heights which only he had explored before, cry "chorus" and reach that great antiphony which he had dreamed, careless of all the work of production that had created the atmosphere. Society or paupers might flock the boxes, but the audience was to him just something that listened. After the failure of the first season he had to act very quickly. Bernacchi, the Venetian castrato, had been a dismal failure for no other reason than that he was a new-comer.1 He had drawn Italy, had pleased Austria, but London would have none of him. Handel sent him going when the curtain fell on Partenope. Riemschneider went back to Hamburg of his own accord, thoroughly convinced that opera in London was a fool's game. Strada was the only singer to whom Handel adhered as worth salvage. By the time Partenope had failed, she had become established as a singer in the salons. Mrs Delany wrote of forming parties to hear her sing. Later she unbent, and declared that Strada was the "draw" of the evening. This unhappy wobbling woman with the voice of gold! Society would have sent her back to Italy, but Handel made it accept her, till she became the one foreign singer remaining in London who carried the public. The catastrophe of the opening season had been mainly one of singers. The public was openly hostile to half the " 1 Manuscript note on the page which deals with Lotario in the copy of Mainwaring's life of Handel from the Royal Library (see p. 169), the note may have been written by George III: Bernacchi was a good singer, far superior to any we now hear at the Haymarket Theatre, but not equal to either Senesino or Farinelli; had party and fashion not made all mad at the time, Handel's operas must have been full, yet solid and good sense cannot always hold (?) its proper place, though folly and extravagance for a time may prevail." singers Handel had engaged in Italy. Prejudice was the factor that governed this antagonism. Handel, therefore, set to work to sort his principals. He wrote to Mr Colman, British Envoy at Florence, giving him powers to engage Italian singers on his behalf. This man, who, it seems, had no experience in music, was given a commission to engage artistes according to their repute, a foolhardy proceeding only accounted for by Handel's inability to take a further journey to Italy. Senesino, whose hostility to Handel had been obvious from the time that he first set foot in London, the man of a thousand vanities, coarse speech, dirty in living, so that he fed himself with his fingers, was re-engaged by Colman. "I learn the reasons that have determined you to re-engage Sr. Senesino for the sum of fourteen hundred guineas, to which we agree,' Handel wrote to Colman in October 1730 on behalf of himself and Heidegger. He was content to sink the old feud, and to subject himself—as he knew he would be subjected— to fresh annoyance and irritation from this fellow, rather than that the future of the opera should suffer. Senesino's vogue had been tremendous; with the aid of this rapscallion Handel believed that the popularity of opera might be restored. The season opened on 3rd November. Handel had become cautious, he was not risking any more money nor quarrelling with Heidegger over new productions till the box-office took on a healthier appearance. Accordingly he opened with a revival of Scipio, with Senesino back in his original part. Once again the old enthusiastic crowds began to roll up to the doors. All through the winter he made money with revivals of his own and other operas. And no composer of any time ever loved making money better than Handel, not for money's sake, for he lived simply enough, but because it was a form of vanity derived from the knowledge that his work was successful. The partnership was prospering. Society came down to the Haymarket in their chairs and coaches. Handel was sought after with fresh zeal. Society had suddenly remembered him. At the beginning of February 1731 he produced his new opera Poro, though Heidegger would gladly have continued revivals till the end of the season. The book was Metastasio's, and as usual was hastily composed. Handel completed the Poro second act in a week. Poro with its background of Oriental romance was instantly a success. Never did Senesino in all his London singing rise to a greater height than with the air "Se possono tanto." He had never been out of favour, now he attained in one night a far greater popularity than ever. In a week all London was humming the airs, and, to meet the demand for the music, Walsh rushed out edition after edition. It was obvious that Handel had lost none of his magic. Many declared that Poro was the best opera he had given London. When Poro had finished its run Rinaldo was revived with the addition of some new songs, because it was an opera of the same romantic category. But the revival was short. A terrific heat wave descended on London at the end of May. It became impossible to sit in the ill-ventilated theatres, though the doors were kept open throughout the performances. Crowds assembled in the street, to the obstruction of all traffic in the narrow thoroughfare, in order to hear the music without the onus of having to pay for seats. But no production could stand against this onslaught of humidity. The concertrooms closed down, the theatres followed, and Handel was the last to shut his doors. The partnership was prospering; not a single performance had been played at a loss throughout the season. When opera in England had sunk to its lowest ebb Handel lifted it up again. Society was attracted from the lewdness of the French farces, and flocked to his boxes. Even Heidegger began to think that perhaps there was something left in legitimate entertainment after all. CHAPTER XIV THE BIRTH OF ORATORIO A SEASON of triumph, and yet in the midst of it-disaster. On the 27th of the previous December Handel's mother died: on the 2nd of January 1731 she was laid beside the old barbersurgeon in the Handel tomb at Halle. Handel was just completing the score of Poro when the news came to him. Frau Dorothea had been the only woman who ever stole beyond the fringe of Handel's affections. He never understood women: he never cared for them, save with a distant friendship. Faustina, Strada, Mrs Cibber, and the two frail creatures to whom he had once paid attention and who had. occupied a few hours of his thoughts, had sped out of his life again as might some trespassers in a world that was never theirs all these people were no more than moods or points of interest. Handel had ever been, and continued to be, a sort of sexless creature. Only one woman ever influenced his life, ever put the meaning of womanhood into a soul that sang most sweetly of the feminine sex. Quaintly enough, his great understanding of his mother came, not from her presence, her ready influence, but from her distance. She always seemed to reach out to him and touch him, in Hamburg, in Italy, in Hanover, in London. When he was soaring, or when in the grip of adversity. She was ever there. He had deserted her, and was always conscious of this desertion. Frau Dorothea might have lived her later years in greater comfort if he had 1 The copy of Mainwaring from the Royal Library which contains manuscript notes supposedly written by George III (see p. 169) has the following scribbled on p. 108: "G. F. Handel was ever honest, nay excessively polite, but like all Men of Sense would talk all, and hear none, and scorned the advice of any but the Woman He loved, but his Amours were rather of short duration, always within the pale of his own profession, but He knew that without Harmony of Souls neither love nor the creation could have been created (?) and Discord ends Love as certainly as the last Trumpet will call us from our various . . . to the all merciful Seat of a merciful but at the same time Righteous Judge." Death of Handel's Mother never left Halle, and had developed, not into a being who was to sing through the centuries, but a very able organist at the Liebfrauenkirche, with fixed and constant wage, who kept a respectable and quietly ordered life compatible with the Handel repute. Instead, he had marched away one gay morning out to the vagueness of a strange quest, to rise to something beyond the reach of her simple mind, to sit with princes and kings, great men and rogues, in a world of his own fashioning. But in some mysterious fashion she impressed her sex upon Handel where every other woman failed. He was conscious of this influence in Hamburg when he sent her money from his first earnings. He continued the remittances in Italy; in London, even when his banker was pressing. He gave her what time he could spare from his activities; in the midst of his greatest failures he never omitted to write his regular letter. It is necessary to consider this extraordinary link between the twain carefully, because it was not a filial relationship so much as the benevolence of a friend, a great mastering influence that was distant, yet ever present an influence that stood for the entire understanding of a sex in the rather lonely mind of Handel. A few days after he had produced Poro he wrote with the full bitterness of his loss to Michaelsen: "I cannot yet restrain my tears. But it has pleased the Most High to enable me to submit. Your thoughtfulness (over the burial) will never pass from my remembrance until, after this life, we are once more united." A little later he wrote again and thanked Michaelsen for his " arrangements on the occasion of the interment of my dearest mother." In the spring of 1731 Handel was a solitary figure in the world. The Halle vault hid his two parents, the sisters had gone, Michaelsen, his brother-in-law, whom he only saw once, had married again and raised a new family. Michaelsen had become a rather prominent figure in German political life; and if he had ever heard a Handel air played he would not have recognised it, for he had no interest in music. All the German ties were now to Handel as things of the dust. In England he had his queer assortment of friends: Burlington and Newcastle, who never really understood him; Chandos, |