known as the Royal Academy of Music.  Handel’s success made him many enemies, and he was throughout his career the object of innumerable plots on the part of disappointed and envious rivals.  The most active of these was Buononcini, himself a composer of no mean ability, though eclipsed by the genius of Handel.  Buononcini’s machinations were so far successful—­though he himself was compelled to leave England in disgrace for different reasons—­that in 1741, after the production of his ‘Deidamia,’ Handel succumbed to bankruptcy and a severe attack of paralysis.  After this he wrote no more for the stage, but devoted himself to the production of those oratorios which have made his name famous wherever the English language is spoken.

In spite of their transcendent beauties, the form of Handel’s operas has long banished them from the stage.  Handel, with all his genius, was not one of the great revolutionists of the history of music.  He was content to bring existing forms to the highest possible point of perfection, without seeking to embark upon new oceans of discovery.  Opera in his day consisted of a string of airs connected by recitative, with an occasional duet, and a chorus to bring down the curtain at the end of the work.  The airs were, as a rule, fully accompanied.  Strings, hautboys, and bassoons formed the groundwork of the orchestra.  If distinctive colouring or sonority were required, the composer used flutes, horns, harps, and trumpets, while to gain an effect of a special nature, he would call in the assistance of lutes and mandolins, or archaic instruments such as the viola da gamba, violetta marina, cornetto and theorbo.  The recitativo secco was accompanied by the harpsichord, at which the composer himself presided.  The recitativo stromentato, or accompanied recitative, was only used to emphasise situations of special importance.  Handel’s incomparable genius infused so much dramatic power into this meagre form, that even now the truth and sincerity of his songs charm us no less than their extraordinary melodic beauty.  But it is easy to see that in the hands of composers less richly endowed, this form was fated to degenerate into a mere concert upon the stage.  The science of vocalisation was cultivated to such a pitch of perfection that composers were tempted, and even compelled, to consult the tastes of singers rather than dramatic truth.  Handel’s successors, such as Porpora and Hasse, without a tithe of his genius, used such talent as they possessed merely to exhibit the vocal dexterity of popular singers in the most agreeable light.  The favourite form of entertainment in these degraded times was the pasticcio, a hybrid production composed of a selection of songs from various popular operas, often by three or four different composers, strung together regardless of rhyme or reason.  Even in Handel’s lifetime the older school of opera was tottering to its fall.  Only the man was needed who should sweep the mass of insincerity from the stage and replace it by the purer ideal which had been the guiding spirit of Peri and Monteverde.