Handel | Page 7

the journey.
The date of Handel's departure from Hamburg is unknown, nor have we the slightest information as to his whereabouts until we hear of him at Rome in January 1707. Chrysander's statement that he spent Christmas 1706 with his mother at Halle is manifestly untrue. Mattheson says that he travelled to Rome with a Herr von Binitz, but nothing is known of this gentleman. His most natural route into Italy would be by the Brenner, the historic road of all German pilgrims.
Handel may well have been glad to leave Hamburg, but Hamburg did not forget him. He is mentioned in a theatrical manifesto of 1708 as being already "beloved and celebrated in Italy"; Barthold Feind, one of the Hamburg librettists, who in 1715 translated Handel's Rinaldo, called him "the incomparable Handel, the Orpheus of our time"; and from 1715 to 1734 almost all of Handel's London operas were represented on the Hamburg stage.

CHAPTER II
Arrival in Italy--_Rodrigo_--Rome: Cardinal Ottoboni and the Scarlattis--Naples: Venice: _Agrippina_--appointment at Hanover--London: Rinaldo.
Handel spent three years in Italy. The known facts about his life there are singularly few, and his biographers have often had to draw copiously on their imagination. They may perhaps be forgiven for doing so, since they rightly sought to emphasise the fact that these three years were the most formative period of Handel's personality as a composer. Handel came to Italy as a German; he left Italy an Italian, as far as his music was concerned, and, despite all other influences, Italian was the foundation of his musical language until the end of his life.
On January 14, 1707, a Roman chronicler noted the arrival of "a Saxon, an excellent player on the harpsichord and a composer of music, who has to-day displayed his ability in playing the organ in the church of St. John [Lateran] to the amazement of everyone." This can hardly refer to anyone else than Handel, who throughout his sojourn in Italy was always known as "the Saxon" (_il Sassone_). We owe the discovery of this important document to Mr. Newman Flower. The next date known to us is that of April 11--on the manuscript of Handel's Dixit Dominus, composed in Rome.
Most biographers have, however, assumed that Handel's first halt in Italy would have been made at Florence, in view of the fact that Gian Gastone de' Medici is known to have been at Florence from June 1705 to November 1706. The eldest son of the Grand Duke, Prince Ferdinand, was an enthusiastic patron of music, who employed the best musicians of the day to perform operas in his magnificent country palace at Pratolino, some twelve miles north of Florence. It has been suggested that Handel's first Italian opera, Rodrigo, was composed for Ferdinand and performed early in 1707, but, in view of Mr. Flower's discovery, this seems unlikely. Mr. Flower suggests, indeed, that Ferdinand did not take much interest in Handel, otherwise he would not have allowed him to go to Rome so soon. This is not impossible, for we know that Ferdinand found the operas of Alessandro Scarlatti too serious for his taste, and he may well have thought even less of Handel's music, which (as we can see from the score of _Rodrigo_) was still very German in style.
Rome could offer Handel no opportunities either for composing operas or even for hearing them. Pope Clement X had permitted the opening of a public opera-house (the Teatro Tordinona) in 1671, but it was closed five years later by Innocent XI, who made every effort he could to suppress opera both in public and in private. Innocent XII, who became Pope in 1691, seems to have been, at first, less intolerant, for the theatre was rebuilt, and a few performances were given; but in 1697 he ordered its destruction on grounds of public morality. Except for a few performances of opera in private in 1701 and 1702 no operas were produced in Rome until 1709.
Deprived of opera, the Romans devoted themselves to oratorio--which in musical style was much the same thing--and to chamber music. The most generous patron of music in Rome was the young Cardinal Ottoboni, who had been raised to the purple in his early twenties, in 1690. He had indeed composed an opera himself, which was performed in 1692, but he was more competent as a poet than as a musician; in 1690 Alessandro Scarlatti had set a libretto of his, La Statira.
Handel was no doubt recommended to him by Ferdinand de' Medici, and at the Cardinal's weekly musical parties he soon came into contact with Domenico Scarlatti, as well as with Corelli and Pasquini. Alessandro Scarlatti had left Naples, probably for political reasons, in 1702, and at the end of 1703 Ottoboni had secured him a subordinate post at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore,