Handel | Page 9

move rocks and trees, but he could not make them sing; therefore thou art greater than Orpheus, for thou compellest my aged Muse to song." The style of both words and music suggests that the whole cantata was thrown off, as Mainwaring suggests, on the spur of the moment, and this improvisation may well have taken place at one of the Arcadians' garden parties, for there is a well-known account of a similar improvisation by the poet Zappi and the composer Alessandro Scarlatti.
Handel was by this time fully accepted as one of the leading musicians in Italy, for in June he composed a pastoral, _Aci, Galatea e Polifemo_, for the marriage of the Duke of Alvito at Naples on July 19. It was in July 1708 that the Austrian Viceroy of Naples, Count Daun, was succeeded by Cardinal Grimani, who, towards the end of the year, persuaded Alessandro Scarlatti to return to the service of the royal chapel. As a good friend to Scarlatti, the Cardinal was sure to interest himself in Handel, and it was probably through him that Handel was commissioned to write an opera for Venice, as the Grimani were a great Venetian family and owned the principal opera-house there. How long Handel stayed at Naples we do not know; all that Mainwaring tells us is that he was taken up by a Spanish princess, but, as Naples had belonged to Spain for a hundred and fifty years, Spanish princesses can have been no rarities there, and it is impossible to identify this lady.
From July 1708 until December 1709 we lose sight of Handel entirely. On December 26, the first night of the carnival season, his opera Agrippina was produced at Venice. The libretto was by Cardinal Grimani, who had already written other dramas for music, all produced, like Handel's, at the Teatro San Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice. Venice was the first city which had undertaken opera on a commercial basis, open to the public on payment, whereas in other places it depended for many years on the munificence of princes and nobles. At Venice there existed not one theatre, but several, devoted to opera, each called after the name of the parish in which it was situated, and, of these, the theatre of St. John Chrysostom, built by the Grimani family and still standing (though much remodelled) under the name of Teatro Malibran, was the largest and most important. The Inquisition took a more tolerant view of opera than the Pope; a Venetian preacher admonished actors and singers to remember that they "were abominated of God, but tolerated by the Government by desire of those who took delight in their iniquities."
Agrippina aroused an extraordinary enthusiasm. "The theatre, at almost every pause, resounded with shouts and acclamations of _viva il taro Sassone!_ and other expressions of approbation too extravagant to be mentioned" (Mainwaring). The title part was sung by Margherita Durastanti, and another singer who appeared in the opera was Boschi, the famous bass; both of them were to sing for Handel in London later on. It is fairly certain that Boschi must have sung the part of Polyphemus in Handel's Italian Aci e Galatea at Naples, for it bears a striking resemblance to other songs written for Boschi, whose voice was of exceptional range. The opera ran for twenty-seven nights.
After this unprecedented triumph it seems surprising that Handel did not remain in Italy, where he had so many friends who could ensure his success. It is probable that by the time Agrippina was performed, if not indeed long before, he had been promised the post of Kapellmeister to the court of Hanover. The actual appointment is dated June 16, 1710. But no sooner was Handel appointed than he at once obtained leave of absence, and went on, first to Düsseldorf, and then to London. It was probably the Elector's intention that he should spend some time in foreign travel before taking up regular duty.
The three years which Handel spent in Italy at the most impressionable period of his life fixed the characteristics of his style as a composer, and we may well suppose that they exercised a decisive influence on his personality and character. His youth had been spent in the respectable middle-class environment of his home at Halle; then came the three years at Hamburg, fantastic and exciting, yet, despite all the artistic stimulus of Keiser's opera-house, inevitably sordid and provincial. Italy introduced him to an entirely different atmosphere--to a life of dignity and serenity in which a classical culture, both literary and artistic, was the matured fruit of wealth, leisure, and good breeding. That exquisite life found its highest musical expression in Alessandro Scarlatti, who at that period was incontestably the greatest of living musicians. On his style Handel formed his own, and it