of that school of Italian opera which was called into being by the worship of vocal art for its own sake.  He had an inexhaustible flow of tunefulness, and the few charming songs of his now extant show great elegance of melodic structure, and such sympathy with the needs of the voice as make them the most perfect vehicle for expression and display on the part of the singer.  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.”

In 1731 the celebrated couple accepted an offer from the brilliant Court of Dresden, presided over by Augustus II., as great a lover of art and literature as Goethe’s Duke of Saxe-Weimar, or as the present Louis of Bavaria.  This aesthetic monarch squandered great sums on pictures and music, and gave Hasse unlimited power and resources to place the Dresden opera on such a footing as to make it foremost in Europe.  His first opera produced in Dresden was the masterpiece of his life, “Alessandro dell’ Indie,” and its great success was perhaps owing in part to the splendid singing and acting of Faustina, for whom indeed the music had been carefully designed.  As the husband of the most fascinating prima donna of her age, Hasse had no easy time.  His life was still further embittered by the presence and intrigues of Porpora, his old master and now rival, and jealousy of Porpora’s pupil, Mingotti, who threatened to dispute the sway of his wife.  Hasse’s musical spite was amusingly shown in writing an air for Mingotti in his “Demofoonte.”  He composed the music for what he thought was the defective part of her voice, while the accompaniment was contrived to destroy all effect.  Mingotti was nothing daunted, but by hard study and ingenious adaptation so conquered the difficulties of the air, that it became one of her greatest show-pieces.  A combination of various causes so dissatisfied the composer with Dresden, that he divided his time between that city, Venice, Milan, Naples, and London, though the Saxon capital remained his professed home.  One of his diversions was the establishment of opera in London in opposition to Handel; but he became so ardent an admirer of that great man’s genius, that he refused to be a tool in the hands of the latter’s enemies, though several of his operas met with brilliant success in the English capital.

Dresden life at last flowed more easily with Hasse and Faustina on the advent of Augustus III., who possessed his father’s connoisseurship without his crotchets and favoritism.  Here he remained, with the exception of a short Venetian sojourn, till late in life.  On the evening of Frederick the Great’s entrance into Dresden in 1745, after the battle of Kesselsdorf, Hasse’s opera of “Arminio” was performed by command of the conqueror, who was so charmed with the work and Faustina’s singing that he invited