Handel | Page 6

at the harpsichord.
For several performances Handel made no objection and gave up his
seat to Mattheson when the moment came, but on December 5, for
some reason or other, he refused, to the surprise and indignation of the
composer. German musicians in those days were a quarrelsome crew;

at the court of Stuttgart the musicians were so much given to knocking
each other on the head with their instruments, even in the august
presence of His Serene Highness, that there was hardly one left
undamaged. It was only to be expected that the friends of Handel and
Mattheson should egg them on to fight a duel in the street; luckily
Mattheson's sword broke on a button of Handel's coat, and the duel
ended. On December 30 a town councillor effected a reconciliation; the
rivals dined together at Mattheson's house and went on to the rehearsal
of Almira, which was brought out on January 8, 1705, with Mattheson
as the principal tenor.
Almira, the libretto of which was partly in German and partly in Italian,
ran continuously for about twenty performances until February 25,
when it was succeeded by Nero, another opera which Handel had
hastily composed for the occasion. Nero, in which Mattheson sang the
title part, was a failure. The music is lost, but the libretto survives, and
that is enough to account for the collapse. The opera had three
performances only. In the very same season Keiser re-set Nero to music
himself, and brought it out under the title of _Octavia_; shortly
afterwards he did the same with Almira, which was performed in
August of the same year. Although Keiser's operas were no more
successful than Handel's, and his extravagance and mismanagement
forced him to leave Hamburg for three years in order to avoid
imprisonment, it is evident that he had made Handel's position in the
theatre impossible. Handel withdrew into private life and devoted
himself to earning a living by teaching. Mattheson says that Handel
remained in Hamburg until 1709, and that he still worked in the theatre,
but the first of these statements is certainly untrue, and the second
probably so. Mattheson himself left the theatre after the failure of
Handel's Nero, and his friendship with Handel seems to have come to
an end. About Handel's subsequent life in Hamburg we know nothing,
until the theatre was taken over by one Saurbrey in the autumn of 1706.
Saurbrey commissioned an opera from Handel, but, owing to the
confusion in which Keiser had left the affairs of the theatre, it could not
be brought out until January 1708, when it was found to be so long that
it had to be divided into two operas, Florindo and Daphne, both of
which were put on the stage successively. By that time Handel had left

Hamburg for Italy; he evidently took little interest in the production of
these works, neither of which has survived.
It was during the run of Almira, says Mainwaring, that Handel made
the acquaintance of Prince Gian Gastone de' Medici, son of the Grand
Duke Cosmo III of Tuscany. Mainwaring's date is wrong, for it is
known that Gian Gastone at that time was in Bohemia with his wife, a
German princess, to whom he had been married against his will. But it
is also known that he was in Hamburg for a few months during the
winter of 1703-04, and, if he met Handel at that time, the rest of
Mainwaring's story becomes much more credible than subsequent
biographers have been willing to admit. According to Mainwaring,
Handel became almost an intimate friend of the Prince; they often
discussed music together, and the Prince lamented that Handel was
unacquainted with the music and musical life of Italy. "Handel
confessed that he could see nothing in Italian music which answered
the high character His Highness had given it. On the contrary, he
thought it so very indifferent, that the singers, he said, must be angels
to recommend it." Gian Gastone urged him to come to Italy and hear
for himself, intimating "that if he chose to return with him, no
conveniences should be wanting." Handel declined the invitation, but
resolved to go to Italy as soon as he could do so "on his own bottom."
Gian Gastone was a spendthrift and a profligate; his moral reputation
was of the worst, and he was chronically in debt. That, however, would
not make it unthinkable that after a glass of wine he should invite
Handel to come to Italy with him, but Handel may well have known
enough about the Prince even then to reply to the proposal with tactful
evasiveness. From what Mattheson says of Handel on his first arrival in
Hamburg, it is quite likely that he was contemptuous of Italian opera
music, and it is