Lincoln's Inn all the pleasure folks in town. The opera ran a lurid course of ninety nights. Swift, who was really the originator of The Beggar's Opera, for he had suggested a comedy based on prison criminals to Gay some years before, proclaimed it. Society, blushing at its lewdness in the murky recesses of the boxes, returned to see it again and again. “I desire you will introduce The Beggar's Opera at Gloucester," writes Mrs Pendarves to Mrs Ann Granville.1 "You must sing it everywhere but at Church, if you have a mind to be like the polite world." Rich, who was running the Lincoln's Inn Theatre, sat down quietly to be worthy of his name. And the end of it all savours of the later romances of the Gaiety of our time, for Lavinia Fenton, the first actress to play the part of "Polly," eventually married her patron, the Duke of Bolton. Oddly enough she lived happily with him ever after. This was the mood of London when Handel produced Siroe in February. It registered only nineteen performances. Not even Signora Mignotti, who had discarded the corsage for the doublet and created a wild sensation in male attire, could keep the opera going against The Beggar's Opera. Yet it had its ardent supporters. May your Honour leave as soon as she can her work looms, and, having concluded a truce with embroidery, come to hear this beautiful opera," wrote one of them to Lady Newdigate of Arbury. "I am sure that Jove in his Olympian feasts has not such an elegant diversion." 66 It was useless. The counter-attractions of The Beggar's Opera were too strong. Siroe concluded its brief run, yet such was the beauty of Metastasio's libretto that it was continuously reset by other composers for nearly a hundred years. At the end of April Handel produced his Tolomeo (Ptolemy). It was the last shot in his locker for the Academy, and at best a hasty work based on as hasty a libretto by Haym, though not without a singular beauty in some of its airs. Tolemeo survived seven performances, then the Academy curtain came down for the last time. The money was all gone; mismanagement and extravagance had caused an end 1 Mrs Delany, "Life and Correspondence," vol. i. p. 163. The Academy Closes less succession of losses. Even Handel with certain commercial acumen could not see that singers paid at the rate of £2000 a year-which was the remuneration of Cuzzoni and Faustina, and certainly Senesino could not have been much cheapergave the shareholders no chance. The failure provoked a scream of joy from Bononcini in the shape of a widely circulated and anonymous brochure giving advice to music producers! The venomous Italian had his little crowning hour. But, all things considered, the Academy had been an influence, and, in failure, left an influence. It had done more to establish sound music with the English people than any musical movement of the eighteenth century. It had declared the mastery of Handel to those who, ignoring partisan creeds and petty quarrels, remained faithful to their convictions. If for no other reason, then, the shareholders did not lose their £50,000 in vain. CHAPTER XIII THE PARTNERSHIP WITH HEIDEGGER THE Academy to which Handel had sanctified his thoughts and hopes in those gay spring days of 1720 had fallen down like a pack of cards. Senesino, after a last wild burst of temper had left Handel, and taken Faustina and her husband to Venice. Cuzzoni and Boschi had followed. All the stars adorning the firmament of Handel's imagining had slipped away in the dark. After the nine days' wonder of the Academy's failure and a general clamour, in which everybody was blamed-the directors, the singers, Handel himself— Society came to the conclusion that Italian opera had been an expensive experiment in London which nobody wanted, and Handel an equally unnecessary appanage of a very German and unpopular Court. He was isolated. He seemed to disappear from the town. Occasionally he was seen going slowly along in the gardens with that swaying, ambling walk so characteristic of him. His broad figure, his German jargon, his deep chuckling laughter vanished from the concert-rooms, from the little coteries of true music lovers. Some said he had gone to the Continent and would not return. Others that his heart was broken, and he would never be seen again. There were still some who found in his absence from those circles that had been his life a cause for laughter as at the fall of a giant. He composed nothing. During the months that immediately followed the Academy's collapse, all interest in composition seemed to have forsaken him. Not that he was beaten. He had made money, and had saved money. In the late autumn he concocted a scheme with Heidegger whereby they would both put £10,000 into the King's Theatre, and run it themselves with a new opera of Handel's making. Handel goes to Italy Gay and Pepusch had put up a sequel to The Beggar's Opera in Polly, for which the Duchess of Queensborough was banished from Court, because she strove to sell some seats to the King, Polly being a most vicious and tuneful satire on those circles that moved about the throne. The Lord Chamberlain arose and smote Polly and its would-be producers, which made the scandal more scandalous, for everybody wanted to read the opera if they could not see it. These two efforts of Gay's were heresies which proved to Handel that, given the entertainment it required, London was still prepared to fill any theatre. Heidegger had made his thousands out of his masquerades as Handel had done in the past out of his music, so they got together a puppet board of directors, but were quite clear in their own minds that they alone would direct the theatre. The project opened a new vista to Handel. But there were no singers of sufficient merit left in the country to draw Society out after its heavy dinners. So he set off for Italy in January 1729 in search of artistes, in spite of the fact that he had written nothing as yet for them to sing.1 He wandered from Milan to Rome, to Venice, mixing in musical and operatic circles, and became a constant patron of all the theatres. The opera had changed enormously since last he trod the dust of Italy. It had become more popular, and, to a great extent, held the place in public favour now occupied by the music-hall. The poorer classes deprived themselves of the necessities of life in order to buy tickets of admission; even mendicants got in somehow, and crouched in the corners, in the corridors or anywhere, so long as they could see and hear. In Rome no women were allowed to perform in the theatres; the female parts were taken by castrati, who usually sang well but acted badly—especially in grand operawithout feeling. The result was that the opera-goer had to be generous in his licence, as for instance, when the part of a pretty vivacious girl was played by a heavy man with big feet and arms, and a thick, black beard. Young boys took the " 1 Handel's biographers declare that he went to Italy in the autumn of 1728, but the Daily Post of 27th January 1729 says: Yesterday morning Mr Handell, the famous Composer of Italian musick, took his leave of Their Majesties, he being to set out this day for Italy." parts of female dancers, and there were police regulations in force by which they had to wear black breeches. As for the spectators, they wandered about in casual fashion during the singing, for the performance being long, and composed of at least two-thirds recitatives, it was the usual thing to visit people of one's acquaintance in their boxes, especially the ladies whose conversaziones one had been in the habit of attending. That was an obligatory attention, and the conversation was carried on openly and loudly. Not that there seemed to be the slightest consideration for the other members of the audience or the performers. In Venice, for instance, where the theatres were named after the churches, and were the property of noblemen of the city, it was customary to spit out of the upper boxes, and to throw therefrom the parings of oranges and apples upon the company in the pit, without any regard as to where the refuse fell," though it sometimes happens upon the best Quality," who, though they had boxes of their own, had gone into the pit to hear better." In excellence the operas were below the level of those which Handel had given in London. Like the comedies at the lesser theatres, they were coarse and lewd to the worst degree. Addison declared them to be more lewd than any he had seen in other countries. "Their poets have no notion of genteel comedy," he said, "and fall into the most filthy double meanings imaginable when they have a mind to make their audience merry. ." Indeed, the whole state of the theatre in Venice, as Handel found it, must have sickened him. The new adventure was stirring within him the wildest emotion for action. Success: he thought of nothing else. All the life of the southern cities that did not trend to musical achievement left him unmoved. Society attempted to fête him; he spurned it. The sycophants of the Ottoboni Court came out to clamour to him, for was not he a product of that Court? So they said. But he kept out of the reach of pomp and the shallowness of the social scale, searching, travelling, insensitive to fatigue. 1 Abbé Jerome Richard, "Description historique de l'Italie." 2 Edward Wright, "Some Observations Made in Travelling Through France, Italy, etc.," 1730. " Addison, Travels Through Italy and Switzerland." |