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Samuel Wesley was the first person to draw attention to this practice of Handel's, though only in a private letter of 1808. In 1831 Dr. Crotch, in his professorial lectures at Oxford, named no less than twenty-nine composers whom Handel had "quoted or copied." The researches of Chrysander, Dr.
Chrysander suggested, and we may well believe, that the setting of these words in Messiah, given to a female voice, owed its inspiration to the memory of Dorothea Sophia. Handel was evidently much attached to her.
Doctor Mainwaring says that Händel was Apollo and she Daphne. Chrysander in his great biography properly notes that the legend has been twisted, and represents here the god as fleeing from the nymph. Coxe says that Vittoria was "an excellent singer, the favourite mistress of the Grand Duke of Tuscany" which gives a decidedly different look to Händel's "prudence."
It is said of Handel that during his Italian trip he became engaged to the singer, Vittoria Tesi. But his biographer, Chrysander, disbelieves the story, and the historian Burney speaks of an Italian count as her lover. According to the latter account, she behaved very generously, and tried to dissuade her noble admirer from a marriage that would disgrace him and his family.
Chrysander attributed to 1716 a set of nine German songs with violin obbligato to semi-sacred words by Brockes; but there is some difficulty about accepting this date, for, although eight of the poems had already been printed by Brockes, there is one which is found only in the second edition of the book, printed in 1724.
The only other opera performed was Narciso, by Domenico Scarlatti, which was even less successful than the others. Chrysander seems to suggest that Scarlatti came to London with the idea of being a rival to Handel, but it is much more likely that Handel himself persuaded the Academy to invite the friend of his youth. The season ended on June 25.
Chrysander tries to prove that this Vittoria was no other than the famous singer, Vittoria Tesi, "a contralto of masculine strength," as one listener describes her voice. She was very dramatic, and made her chief success in men's roles, singing bass songs transposed an octave higher. She was born at Florence in 1690, and would have been seventeen years old when Händel's "Roderigo" was produced there in 1707. That she should be capable of so ardent a love at that age need hardly be mentioned when we remember that Romeo's Juliet was only twelve at the time of her immortal amour. Love
Orlando is a thoroughly romantic opera Chrysander even compares it with those of Weber full of episodes of madness and magic; it is so far removed from the ordinary conventions of its time that we can well imagine it to have startled both its audiences and its singers. The affairs of the opera-house were going badly, and it is probable that there were considerable dissension within its walls.
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