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Updated: May 5, 2025
Another masterpiece of Handel's, Tamerlano, inaugurated the autumn season of 1724 in October; in December appeared Ariosti's Artaserse, in January Giulio Cesare held the stage till the production of another Handel opera, Rodelinda, which came out on February 13, and ran for thirteen nights.
We were to give the Artaserse, a tragedy of extreme length and magniloquence, and conclude with the Donne Furlane. The night arrived; the theatre was full from parterre to gallery; the boxes presented a truly brilliant spectacle. The curtain went up, and the play began.
My role was that of the Messenger, and only gave me one long speech, recounting the miraculous preservation of Artaspe and Spiridate, sons of King Artaserse and lovers of the two ladies; the treachery, discovery, and violent end of Dario in fact, the untying of the knot firmly twisted in the third act.
The opera was Artaserse; and the pleasure she received from the music was much augmented by her previous acquaintance with that interesting drama; yet, as to all noviciates in science, whatever is least complicated is most pleasing, she found herself by nothing so deeply impressed, as by the plaintive and beautiful simplicity with which Pacchierotti uttered the affecting repetition of sono innocente! his voice, always either sweet or impassioned, delivered those words in a tone of softness, pathos, and sensibility, that struck her with a sensation not more new than delightful.
They had believed this ending to have been devised for their entertainment, and had completely approved of it. Our manager had been sent for by the Syndic, congratulated and rewarded by a handsome present. The piece was to be repeated next evening, and, for the sake of that, it was even promised that the public would sit through the Artaserse again.
Farinelli's singing turned the scale in favor of Handel's enemies, who had previously hardly been able to keep the enterprise on its feet, and had run in debt nineteen thousand pounds. He made his first appearance at the Lincoln's Inn Opera in "Artaserse," one of Hasse's operas.
For ten years, that most wonderful of male singers, as musical historians unite in calling Farinelli, charmed away the melancholy of Philip V. of Spain by singing to him every evening the same two melodies of Hasse, taken from the opera of "Artaserse."
I shall only say of Artaserse that La Panormita was the Aspasia of the piece, and Belviso the Berenice, her foster-sister and companion.
He was at first whole-hearted in his devotion to the school of Porpora, Hasse and the others who did so much to degrade Italian opera. 'Artaserse, his first work, was produced in 1741, the year in which Handel bade farewell for ever to the stage. It was successful, and was promptly followed by others no less fortunate.
The next morning, during breakfast, Cecilia was informed that a gentleman desired to speak with her. She begged permission of Mrs Harrel to have him asked upstairs, and was not a little surprized when he proved to be the same old gentleman whose singular exclamations had so much struck her at Mr Monckton's, and at the rehearsal of Artaserse.
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