[158] He was the brother of the celebrated Bononcini (Giovanni).
[159] 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.
[160] 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.
[161] 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).
[162] When the poet Barthold Feind gave in 1715 the translation of Rinaldo at Hamburg, he did not neglect to call him the universally celebrated Mr. Handel, known to the Italians as “l’Orfeo del nostro secolo” and “un ingegno sublime.”
[163] He did not hurry. He stayed at Düsseldorf with the Elector Palatine (A. Einstein, etc., April, 1907), then in the later months of the year he went to see his family at Halle.
[164] To speak truly, they were more like little cantatas than lieder. The Collection Schoelcher in the Library of the Paris Conservatoire possesses these copies.
[165] Volumes XXVII and XLVIII of the Complete Handel Edition.
[166] One sees by the letters of 1711 that Handel applied himself, even in Germany, to perfecting his knowledge of English.