Berenice

although Handel had put up some attraction in Conti, who elected to be known as Conti Gizziello, after D. Gizzi, the maestro who had trained him in Naples. Conti first appeared in a small part in Ariodante, and then again in Arminio and Giustino. The Daily Post said he was one of the best performers in the kingdom, but he certainly could not save Handel.

The desperation of Handel is visible in his actions of the next few months. Arminio failed in January, and he put on Giustino in February. It played to empty houses, yet the King's Theatre in the Haymarket was papered from boxes to the pit. He took off Giustino, since it was a hopeless project from the first night, and completed the opera Berenice, based on some unknown libretto. The days were gone when he could have his libretti prepared for him; he must obtain his words where he can. Berenice, with its divine minuet and the elusive haunting melody of its songs, was produced in May, and taken off the same month. Handel was breaking, but he fought on. He revived his Triumph of Time, one of the first fledglings of his Italian sojourn, and put it on in the early summer. It too failed.

The giant was falling. The singers at the theatre were upset by the constant failures, the continual new parts. They drifted away one by one, the Italians to return to their country in the belief that opera as such was dead in London. Debtors were pressing. The balance of the £10,000 saved, with which Handel had come out of the King's Theatre débâcle, had disappeared. He was piled with debts. Of what use now was the favour of the Prince of Wales, since the Prince and his moneyed friends had destroyed him?

The pain in his arm increased, until his right side was entirely paralysed. In vain did the London Daily Post publish a notice in May that "Mr Handel who has been suffering from rheumatism is recovering." He was not recovering; he was becoming rapidly worse.

He closed the doors of Covent Garden Theatre on 1st June 1737. He was smashed. The debtors then began to assail him in shoals; they threatened to send him to prison. He must have reasoned with them very effectually, for, instead of casting him into the debtors' penitentiary, they all accepted

his bills. With one exception-del Pò, the husband of Strada, refused to accept any settlement but that of cash.

Ten days later the King's Theatre closed down with admitted debts of £12,000, two thousand more than the total claims against Handel. If Handel's fortunes were obscured for the moment, they were not beyond recall, but Porpora, whose music had never been popular in London, was finished. He went back to Venice, composed, sank step by step into extreme poverty, till, when pleurisy killed him, a public subscription had to be organised to pay for his funeral. He went to a pauper's grave as Handel went to the Abbey, which perhaps was one of the comparisons of greatness.

Meanwhile, his mind unhinged, his body tormented by tortures unspeakable, Handel hurried to Aix-la-Chapelle. He was bowed, and walked painfully with a stick, but his eyes, that ever saw beyond to-morrow, perceived with certainty the things that were to come.

CHAPTER XVII

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN

HANDEL remained at Aix-la-Chapelle until November. He had no plans for the future, and, if he dreamed about further productions, he had no money to carry them out. Only one cantata did he compose, and that for the celebration of the fifth centenary of the town of Elbing, and the manuscript of it is lost.1

But now the road was clear for him in London. Porpora had disappeared. Senesino was in Italy creating a new furore. Farinelli had gone back to Italy with a fortune made out of his three London seasons, and forthwith began the building of a palace which he named "The English Folly" as a compliment—a rather back-handed one-to those who had filled his pockets and snuff-boxes with guineas. The London operatic world had tumbled to pieces.

Aix, with its quiet, its waters, soon produced something of a cure in Handel. The pain disappeared from his limbs, the curtain of despair from his mind. So complete was his cure before the summer waned, that he is said to have left the baths and gone straight to the Cathedral, where he played upon the organ with all his old fire, whereupon some nuns who chanced to be passing declared that a miracle had been performed." The glamour of those victorious nights in London was a lure with him still, and refused to be shaken off. He returned to London through Flanders, with the opening of a new opera in his pocket.

Back in Brook Street he was idle no longer; he began to work feverishly on the new opera. He discovered, too, that his old partner, Heidegger, had taken the King's Theatre, had

1 R. A. Streatfeild, "Handel," p. 144.

* Mainwaring, p. 123.