Great German Composers | Page 8

a notorious fact that the celebrated
song, "Where the Bee sucks," by Dr. Arne, is taken from a movement
in "Rinaldo." Thus the new life of music is ever growing rich with the
dead leaves of the past. The most celebrated of these operas was
entitled "Otto." It was a work composed of one long string of exquisite
gems, like Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and Gounod's "Faust." Dr.
Pepusch, who had never quite forgiven Handel for superseding him as

the best organist in England, remarked, of one of the airs, "That great
bear must have been inspired when he wrote that air." The celebrated
Madame Cuzzoni made her _début_ in it. On the second night the
tickets rose to four guineas each, and Cuzzoni received two thousand
pounds for the season.
The composer had already begun to be known for his irascible temper.
It is refreshing to learn that operatic singers of the day, however
whimsical and self-willed, were obliged to bend to the imperious
genius of this man. In a spirit of ill-timed revolt Cuzzoni declined to
sing an air. She had already given him trouble by her insolence and
freaks, which at times were unbearable. Handel at last exploded. He
flew at the wretched woman and shook her like a rat. "Ah! I always
knew you were a fery tevil," he cried, "and I shall now let you know
that I am Beelzebub, the prince of de tevils!" and, dragging her to the
open window, was just on the point of pitching her into the street when,
in every sense of the word, she recanted. So, when Carestini, the
celebrated tenor, sent back an air, Handel was furious. Rushing into the
trembling Italian's house, he said, in his four- or five-language style:
"You tog! don't I know better as yourself vaat it pest for you to sing? If
you vill not sing all de song vaat I give you, I vill not pay you ein
stiver." Among the anecdotes told of Handel's passion is one growing
out of the composer's peculiar sensitiveness to discords. The dissonance
of the tuning-up period of an orchestra is disagreeable to the most
patient. Handel, being peculiarly sensitive to this unfortunate necessity,
always arranged that it should take place before the audience assembled,
so as to prevent any sound of scraping or blowing. Unfortunately, on
one occasion, some wag got access to the orchestra where the
ready-tuned instruments were lying, and with diabolical dexterity put
every string and crook out of tune. Handel enters. All the bows are
raised together, and at the given beat all start off con spirito. The effect
was startling in the extreme. The unhappy maestro rushes madly from
his place, kicks to pieces the first double-bass he sees, and, seizing a
kettle-drum, throws it violently at the leader of the band. The effort
sends his wig flying, and, rushing bareheaded to the footlights, he
stands a few moments amid the roars of the house, snorting with rage
and choking with passion. Like Burleigh's nod, Handel's wig seemed to

have been a sure guide to his temper. When things went well, it had a
certain complacent vibration; but when he was out of humor, the wig
indicated the fact in a very positive way. The Princess of Wales was
wont to blame her ladies for talking instead of listening. "Hush, hush!"
she would say. "Don't you see Handel's wig?"
For several years after the subscription of the nobility had been
exhausted, our composer, having invested £10,000 of his own in the
Haymarket, produced operas with remarkable affluence, some of them
pasticcio works, composed of all sorts of airs, in which the singers
could give their bravura songs. These were "Lotario," 1729;
"Partenope," 1730; "Poro," 1731; "Ezio," 1732; "Sosarme," 1732;
"Orlando," 1733; "Ariadne," 1734; and also several minor works.
Handel's operatic career was not so much the outcome of his choice as
dictated to him by the necessity of time and circumstance. As time
went on, his operas lost public interest. The audiences dwindled, and
the overflowing houses of his earlier experience were replaced by
empty benches. This, however, made little difference with Handel's
royal patrons. The king and the Prince of Wales, with their respective
households, made it an express point to show their deep interest in
Handel's success. In illustration of this, an amusing anecdote is told of
the Earl of Chesterfield. During the performance of "Rinaldo" this
nobleman, then an equerry of the king, was met quietly retiring from
the theatre in the middle of the first act. Surprise being expressed by a
gentleman who met the earl, the latter said: "I don't wish to disturb his
Majesty's privacy."
Handel paid his singers in those days what were regarded as enormous
prices. Senisino and Carestini had each twelve hundred pounds,