[129] Thus a French traveller, the Abbé Tolland, in 1702, expresses it.
[130] Created Duke in 1680, he left the same year for Venice. He returned there at the end of 1684, and remained there until about August, 1685. He returned three months later, in December, and only left it in September, 1686. He lived at the palace Foscarini, with a numerous following, his ministers, his poets, his musicians, his chapel. He spent enormous sums. He gave fêtes to the Venetians, and took boxes by the year in five theatres in Venice. In return he lent his subjects as soldiers to Venice; and his son, Maximilian, was a General in the Republic. When the Grand Marshal of the Court of Hanover wrote to the Prince of the discontent of his people, Ernest Augustus answered: “I very much wish that Monsieur the Grand Marshal would come here, then he would no longer write so often to me about coming home. M. the Grand Marshal can have no idea how amusing it is here, and if he only came once he would never want to return to Germany.”
[131] Barthold Feind says in 1708: “Of all the German opera houses, the Leipzig one is the poorest, that of Hamburg the largest, the Brunswick the most perfect, and that of Hanover the most beautiful.” The Opera of Hanover had four tiers of boxes, and was capable of accommodating 1300 people.
[132] The orchestra was composed chiefly of French musicians, and they were conducted by a Frenchman, Jean Baptiste Farinel, son-in-law of Cambert.
[133] A. Einstein and Ad. Sanberger have just republished in the Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Bayern a selection of Steffani’s works. Arthur Neisser has devoted a little book to Steffani. Apropos of one of his operas Servio Tullio, Leipzig, 1902. See also the studies of Robert Eitner in the Allg. Deutsche Biographie; of Chrysander in his Haendel (Volume I), and also Fischer in his Musik in Hannover.
[134] Munich had become the centre of Italian music in Germany since the Prince-Elector Ferdinand had married in 1652 an Italian princess, Adelaide of Savoy. See Ludwig Schiedermair: Die Anfange der Münchener Oper (Sammelb. der I.M.G., 1904).
[135] In 1680.
[136] One finds the list of Steffani’s operas, together with an analysis of the Servio Tullio, in the book of Arthur Neisser.
[137] This opera was played for the fifth centenary of the Siege of Bardwick by Henry Lion-heart in 1089. The Elector of Brandenburg was at the first representation. Steffani treated other German subjects, such as the Tassilone of 1709.
[138] The manuscripts of most of these operas are preserved in the libraries of Berlin, Munich, London, Vienna, and Schwerin. It is astonishing that they have never been published, notwithstanding their importance in the history of German opera. Chrysander has given some specimens of the libretti. The music has only been slightly studied by Neisser, who makes the mistake of not knowing the music of the contemporaries of Steffani, and in consequence is frequently at fault in his appreciation of him.