“Ladies have been known,” says Colley, “to decline their visits upon account of their being of a different musical party.  Caesar and Pompey made not a warmer division in the Roman Republick than those heroines, their country women, the Faustina and Cuzzoni, blew up in our commonwealth of academical musick by their implacable pretentions to superiority.[A] And while this greatness of soul is their unalterable virtue, it will never be practicable to make two capital singers of the same sex do as they should do in one opera at the same time!  No, tho’ England were to double the sums it has already thrown after them.  For even in their own country, where an extraordinary occasion has called a greater number of their best to sing together, the mischief they have made has been proportionable; an instance of which, if I am rightly informed, happen’d at Parma, where upon the celebration of the marriage of that Duke, a collection was made of the most eminent voices that expence or interest could purchase, to give as complete an opera as the whole vocal power of Italy could form.

[Footnote A:  Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni Hasse, whose famous rivalry in 1726 and 1727 is here referred to, were singers of remarkable powers.  Cuzzoni’s voice was a soprano, her rival’s a mezzo-soprana, and while the latter excelled in brilliant execution, the former was supreme in pathetic expression.  Dr. Burney("History of Music,” iv. 319) quotes from M. Quanta the statement that so keen was their supporter’s party spirit, that when one party began to applaude their favourite, the other party hissed!—­R.W.  LOWE, “Notes to the Apology.”]

“But when it came to the proof of this musical project, behold! what woful work they made of it! every performer would be a Caesar or Nothing; their several pretentions to preference were not to be limited within the laws of harmony; they would all choose their own songs, but not more to set off themselves than to oppose or deprive another of an occasion to shine.  Yet any one would sing a bad song, provided nobody else had a good one, till at last they were thrown together like so many feather’d warriors, for a battle-royal in a cock-pit, where every one was oblig’d to kill another to save himself!  What pity it was these froward misses and masters of musick had not been engag’d to entertain the court of some King of Morocco, that could have known a good opera from a bad one!  With how much ease would such a director have brought them to better order?  But alas! as it has been said of greater things,

  “‘Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit.’

“Imperial Rome fell by the too great strength of its own citizens!  So fell this mighty opera, ruin’d by the too great excellency of its singers!  For, upon the whole, it proved to be as barbarously bad as if Malice itself had composed it.”

It was a pity, no doubt, that the light of opera shone but dimly at the Haymarket, yet the ill wind which almost extinguished that light blew a blessing towards the nimble Santlow.  For the dear creature prospered exceeding well as Dorcas Zeal; the heart of the public waxed warm toward the ex-dancer, and so did the cardiac organ of Barton Booth.  A few years later Booth married the charmer, and she, having become virtuous and prim, made the remainder of his life a bed of domestic roses.