a joust between Bononcini and Handel. They were to be tested by an opera written in combination. Handel took up the glove—and was beaten. His Muzio Scevola[1] (March, 1721) is very feeble, and the Floridante which followed (December 9, 1721) is little better. The success of the Italian increased his fame, and the pretty Griselda (February, 1722) consummated Bononcini's glory. He benefited by the strenuous opposition of the English littérateurs, and the leading aristocrats, against the Hanoverian Court and the German artists.
Handel's situation was much involved, but he took his revenge with the melodious opera Ottone (January 12, 1723), which was the most popular of all his operas. Victorious then,[2] he went straight ahead without troubling himself about Bononcini, and he composed, one after another, three masterpieces in which he inaugurated a new musical theatre, as musically rich, and more dramatic than that of Rameau, some ten years later: Guilio Cesare (February 20, 1724); Tamerlano (October
- ↑ Handel wrote the third act, Bononcini the second, the first had been already set by a certain Signor Pippo (Phillipo Matti?).
- ↑ The victory of Handel began for the most part with the engagement of his new interpreter, Francesca Cuzzoni, of Parma, a great and vigorous artist, violent and passionate, whose excellent soprano voice excelled particularly in pathetic cantabile music. She was twenty-two years old, and came to London, where she made her début in Ottone. Her quarrels with Handel, and how he treated her by threatening to throw her out of the window, are well known.
Handel gave again in May another opera, Flavio, of little importance. On his side Bononcini produced Erminia and Attilio, Aristosi, Coreolanus, in which the prison scene reduced the ladies to tears, and inspired numerous analogous scenes in the following operas of Handel.
