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One of these, Francesca Cuzzoni, a native of Parma, had created such a furore on her first appearance, three years earlier, that the opera directors who had engaged her for the season at two thousand guineas were encouraged to charge four guineas for admission, and her costumes were adopted by fashionable youth and beauty.
Two more operas, by Ariosti and Leonardo Vinci of Naples, completed the season, but it was evidently Handel who scored the greatest triumphs, unless the honours should more properly go to Cuzzoni, as Rodelinda, and her brown silk gown trimmed with silver.
Caffarelli was a pupil of the famous vocal teacher Porpora, who wrote operas consisting chiefly of monotonous successions of florid arias resembling the music that is now written for flutes and violins." All very well for the day, no doubt, but could Cuzzoni sing Isolde? Could Faustina sing Mélisande? And what modern parts would be allotted to the Julian Eltinges of the Eighteenth Century?
How Cuzzoni came to be engaged at the opera is not clear. Handel cannot possibly have ever heard her sing; it has been suggested that she was engaged by Heidegger. She was about twenty-two, and had made her first appearance at Venice in 1719, after which she sang in various Italian theatres.
Senisino and Carestini had each twelve hundred pounds, and Cuzzoni two thousand, for the season. Toward the end of what may be called the Handel season nearly all the singers and nobles forsook him, and supported Farinelli, the greatest singer living, at the rival house in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
In a spirit of ill-timed revolt Cuzzoni declined to sing an air. She had already given him trouble by her insolence and freaks, which at times were unbearable. Handel at last exploded. He flew at the wretched woman and shook her like a rat. "Ah!
In 1750 he went to England where he made his first appearance at a benefit concert for Cuzzoni, the celebrated opera singer, then in the sere and yellow leaf of her career. His performance was so brilliant that he became established as the best violinist who had yet appeared in England, and in 1754 he was placed at the head of the opera orchestra, succeeding Festing.
After the Venetian singer retired from London, Cuzzoni again returned to fill an engagement with the opposition company formed by Handel's opponents. With her sang Farinelli and Senesino, the former of whom was the great tenor singer of the age perhaps the greatest who ever lived, if we take the judgment of the majority of the musical historians.
The celebrated Faustina, whose quarrel with Cuzzoni is as famous in the history of music as the war between Gluck and Piccinni, was less daring. Dr. Burney visited her when she was seventy-two years old and asked her to sing. "Alas, I cannot," she replied, "I have lost all my faculties."
Ladies of the highest rank entered with enthusiasm into the strife; and while some flourished their fans aloft on the side of Faustina, whom Handel had introduced in order to supersede Cuzzoni, another party, headed by the Countess of Pembroke, espoused the cause of the depressed songstress, and made her take an oath on the Holy Gospels, that she would never submit to accept a lower salary than her rival.
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