It was in 1705 that the first opera in the Italian style, with recitatives, was performed in this country at Drury Lane; it was called Arsinoë, Queen of Cyprus, written by Motteaux; it so hit the fashionable taste that the lessees decided to open the Queen's Theatre, as the new house was christened (April 9th, 1705), in honour of the reigning sovereign, with one of these exotics, a translation from the Italian, entitled The Triumph of Love. It proved an utter failure, being performed only three nights, after which the manager had to turn to the drama, and in October Vanbrugh produced his admirable comedy The Confederacy. But whether it was on account of the bad acoustic properties of the house, or from other causes, comedy was little more successful than opera, and neither The Confederacy, nor two or three other works from the same pen, drew the public to the Queen's. Congreve quickly retired from the unfortunate speculation, and Sir John Vanbrugh was glad to let the house to a Mr. Owen Swiney, Rich's factotum and man of business, who was to pay £5 for every acting day, and not more than £700 for the entire year. Swiney commenced operations in October, 1706; and business improved under the new manager, who brought some fresh blood into the corps dramatique. The union of the two companies under Colonel Brett, however,' and the growing taste for Italian singers and Italian music, brought about an arrangement with Swiney, by which the Queen's Theatre was to be devoted entirely to opera, while the actors were ordered to return to Drury Lane, there to remain under the patentees, Her Majesty's only company of comedians. The reader of the previous chapters will already have learned how this happy arrangement came to an end, 1 See p. 56. how another revolt of the actors brought a number of them back to the Haymarket, where on certain nights they varied the operatic with the dramatic, considerable alterations having been made in the house to adapt it for the speaking voice. There would be little interest in following all the complications between actors and managers that occurred at this period. By-and-by, Collier, the new patentee of Drury Lane, became also the lessee of the Queen's; after which the actors went back to their old quarters at Drury Lane, and the Haymarket was finally delivered over to the lyric drama. And with this arrangement really commences the history of Italian opera in England. Some Every reader of the Spectator will remember how felicitously Addison' has ridiculed the absurdities and crudities of the opera, as it existed in his time. great star or stars were brought from Italy to sustain. the principal parts, while the minor characters were sustained by English singers; so the lover pleaded to his mistress in a tongue unknown to her, and the lady replied with equal fervour in rhythmical cadences of which he understood not a syllable; heroes addressed their soldiers or their slaves in the liquid accents of Rome or Naples, and were answered in the dialect of Cockayne. Mrs. Tofts, a very fine singer, was the first of our English prime donne; associated with her 1 Much of Addison's virulence against Italian opera, however, resulted from the failure of his own effort at the lyric drama, Rosamond, with music by Thomas Clayton, described as a jargon of sounds,” brought out at the Queen's in 1707. 2 According to Dr. Burney (History of Music), the music of these early operas was neither dramatic, passionate, pathetic, nor graceful. The first violin accompaniment was printed over the voice part, and if the words indicated sorrow it was marked slow, if they implied pleasure it was marked quick. was Margarite L'Epine, and Valentini, the first of those male soprani who so long enchanted English ears. There were several native singers of note; Leveredge, a famous basso, and Hughes, a tenor. The absurdities of such a mongrel dialect were too transparent, and, to use Addison's words, "the audience grew tired of understanding half the opera, and therefore, to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue of thinking, have so ordered it at present that the whole opera is performed in an unknown tongue." The last of those hybrid productions was Pyrrhus and Demetrius, 1708,' and in that same year arrived the famous Nicolini, a name familiar to every reader of the Spectator. Two years later, George Frederick Handel, George the First's Chapel Master at Hanover, was invited over to England; Aaron Hill, the author of several plays, who was then director of the Queen's Theatre under Collier, engaged the great German composer to write an opera upon a subject taken from Tasso, and on February 24th, 1711, Handel's first opera, Rinaldo, was produced at that house, and ran fifteen nights. Rinaldo, though the earliest, was one of the finest works that Handel gave to the stage; among the music are to be found the two beautiful and well-known airs "Cara Sposa" and "Lascia ch'io pianga." Elaborate scenic effects were introduced into these operas, much to the scorn of the Spectator. "How would the wits of King Charles's time have laughed to have seen Nicolini exposed to a tempest in robes of ermine, and sailing in an open boat upon a sea of pasteboard. What a field of raillery would they have been let into, had they been entertained with painted dragons spitting 1 The first opera produced in this country wholly in Italian was Buononcini's Almahide, 1710. wildfire, enchanted chariots drawn by Flanders mares, and real cascades in artificial landskips. .. Rinaldo is filled with thunder and lightning, illuminations and fireworks." Another opera, called Hydaspes, afforded excellent fun for Mr. Spectator. In this Nicolini was thrown into an amphitheatre to be devoured by a lion, to whom he appealed in the minor key, softly whispering in the feline ear the story of his love; then defying the beast in bravura passages, telling him he may tear his bosom but cannot touch his heart, and after cajoling the monarch of the forest into listening to these dulcet strains, Hydaspes took a mean advantage of his tenderness and throttled him. To the powers of Nicolini the Tatler gives ungrudging praise. "Nicolini sets off the character he bears in every opera by his action as much as he does the words of it by his voice; every limb and finger contributes to the part he acts, insomuch that a deaf man might go along with him in the sense of it. There is scarcely a beautiful posture in an old statue which he does not plant himself in, as the different circumstances of the story give occasion for it; he performs the most ordinary action in a manner suitable to the greatness of his character, and shows the prince even in the giving of a letter or the despatch of a letter." Nicolini's salary, however, was only 800 guineas a year. Yet so early as 1711 we hear of Swiney, bankrupt through excess of expenses over receipts, having to fly the country. About the same time as Rinaldo, an opera by Gasparini, founded upon Shakespeare's Hamlet, and entitled Ambletto, was brought out, the overture of which must have been very remarkable for such a subject, consisting, as it did, of four movements closing with a jig! Handel's most formidable rival was Buononcini. He very equally divided the town with the German master, although he was infinitely inferior to him. Swift has immortalised the Italian in his witty epigram: "Some say that Signor Buononcini Compared to Handel's a mere ninny; Strange, that such difference should be 'Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee!" The Duchess of Marlborough, not Sarah, however, thought so much of Buononcini's talents, that she settled £500 a year upon him. Handel composed no fewer than thirty-five Italian operas, some of the airs from which he afterwards introduced into his oratorios. "Whatever pleasure," says Mr. Hogarth, in his Memoirs of the Opera, "they must have given to the audiences of that age, they would fail to do so now; and, indeed, their performance would be impracticable. The music was written for a class of voices, the male soprano, which no longer exists, and for these no performers could now be found. A series of recitatives and airs, with only an occasional duet, and a concluding chorus of the slightest kind, would appear meagre and dull to ears accustomed to the brilliant concerted pieces and finales of the modern stage; and Handel's accompaniments would seem thin and poor amidst the richness and variety of the modern orchestra." In 1785, when the celebrated Madame Mara made her first appearance at the King's Theatre, Handel's operas were already regarded as old-fashioned and out of date. It was not only between the composers that the taste |