and produced in England in the Italian style, Arsinoé, Queen of Cyprus." This nullity, played at Drury Lane in 1705, had a great success, which even exceeded the authentic Italian opera given in the following year in London, Camilla, regina de' Volsci, by Marc Antonio Bononcini.[1] Vainly Addison tried to battle against the Italian invasion. By writing skits on the snobbism of the public with pleasant irony, he endeavoured to oppose the Italian Opera with a national English one.[2] He was defeated, and with him the entire English theatre collapsed.[3] "Thomyris" in 1707 inaugurated the representations half in Italian and half in English, and after the Almahade in January, 1710, all was in Italian. No English musician attempted to continue the struggle.[4]
When Handel arrived then, at the end of 1710,
- ↑ He was the brother of the celebrated Bononcini (Giovanni).
- ↑ This was Rosamunde, played in 1707, which had only three representations. Addison, very little of a musician, had taken as his collaborator the insipid Clayton. His satires against the Italian opera appeared in March and April, 1710, in the Spectator.
- ↑ The struggle was put into evidence in 1708, three years before the Haymarket Theatre was founded under the patronage of the Queen, by the poet Congreve, who gave there the old English plays. In 1708 the English drama left the place and opera installed itself.
- ↑ Two German musicians established in England, and naturalized, Dr. Christoph Pepusch and Nichilo Francesco Haym, pushed certain of their compositions on to the Italian opera stage in London. They were found there later. Pepusch, founder of the Academy of Ancient Music in 1710, was badly disposed against Handel, whose operas he ridiculed in the famous Beggars' Opera of 1728. Haym, who wished to publish in 1730 a great history of music, was one of Handel's librettists.
The Library of the Paris Conservatoire possessed a volume of airs from the principal Italian operas displayed in London from 1706 to 1710 (London, Walsh).
