[100] Occasionally in St. Mark’s there were six orchestras, two large ones in the galleries with the two grand organs, four smaller ones distributed in pairs in the lower galleries, each with two small organs.
[101] Mainwaring relates that Handel arrived incognito at Venice, and that he was discovered in a masquerade where he was playing the clavier. Domenico Scarlatti cried out that it must either be the celebrated Saxon, or the devil. This story, which shows that Handel was celebrated already as a virtuoso, accords very well with his taste for mystifying people, a marked trait in his character.
[102] This appears thoroughly established by recent researches, and contradicts the statement of Chrysander that Handel’s Agrippina had been played at the commencement of 1708 at Venice. All the documents of that time agree in placing the first production of Agrippina at the end of 1709 or at the beginning of 1710.
[103] An autograph cantata by Handel, which is found in London, was dated Rome, March 3, 1708.
[104] This Academy was founded at Rome in 1690 for the production and exposition of popular poetry and rhetoric.
[105] Amongst the “shepherds” of Arcadia were counted four Popes (Clement XI, Innocent XIII, Clement XII, Benoit XIII), nearly all the sacred colleges, the Princes of Bavaria, Poland, Portugal; the Queen of Poland, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, and a crowd of great lords and ladies.
[106] Scarlatti under the name of Terpandro; Corelli under that of Archimelo; Pasquini as Protico; Marcello as Dryanti. Handel was not inscribed on the Arcadia list because he was not yet of the regulation age, twenty-four years.
[107] Cardinal Ottoboni was a Venetian, and nephew of the Pope Alexander VIII. A good priest, very benevolent, and ostentatious art patron whose prodigalities were celebrated even in England, where Dryden eulogised them in 1691 in the Prologue of Purcell’s King Arthur. He was a great dilettante, and even wrote an opera himself, Il Columbo, overo l’India scoperta, 1691. Alessandro Scarlatti set to music his libretto of Statira, and composed for him his Rosaura, and his Christmas Oratorio. He was particularly intimate with Corelli, who lived with him.
[108] Corelli took the first violin, and Francischiello, the violoncello.
[109] At one meeting of the Arcadia in April, 1706, Alessandro Scarlatti seated himself at the keyboard, whilst the poet Zappi improvised a poem. Hardly had Zappi finished reciting the last verse than Scarlatti improvised music on the verses—similarly at Ottoboni’s house Handel improvised many secular cantatas whilst the Cardinal Panfili improvised the verses. It is related that one of these poems constituted a Dithyrambic eulogy, and that Handel, unperturbed, amused himself by setting it to music, and doubtless singing it.