Senesino and Cuzzoni had made life impossible for the other singers. Durastanti retired to the Continent; Anastasia Robinson left the stage, and married her old admirer Lord Peterborough. Senesino and Cuzzoni, however, were indispensable to the success of the opera, and probably the ridiculous affectations of the one and the abominable manners of the other were not without their attraction to a public which could enjoy all the pleasure of gossiping about them without having to put up with them at close quarters.
The season of 1723 began in November with Buononcini's Farnace and Handel's Ottone; in January 1724 a new opera, Vespasiano, by Attilio Ariosti, was given, and ran for nine successive nights. Ariosti was never a very troublesome rival to Handel; he was a man of amiable character, and apparently quite content to remain aloof from the party politics of the opera-house. On February 14, Handel produced his Giulio Cesare, one of his finest dramatic works; it has been revived with considerable success in recent years, partly owing to the fact that modern audiences are more familiar with the episode of Caesar and Cleopatra than with the subjects of Handel's other operas. Giulio Cesare had the advantage of a strong cast; Senesino sang the title part, with Berenstadt and Boschi to support him, and the women included Cuzzoni, as well as Durastanti and Mrs. Robinson, who had not yet quitted the opera company.
Another masterpiece of Handel's, Tamerlano, inaugurated the autumn season of 1724 in October; in December appeared Ariosti's Artaserse, in January Giulio Cesare held the stage till the production of another Handel opera, Rodelinda, which came out on February 13, and ran for thirteen nights. 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. All the old ladies, says Burney, were scandalised with its vulgarity and indecorum, "but the young adopted it as a fashion so universally, that it seemed a national uniform for youth and beauty."
Cuzzoni created a further sensation in the summer by giving birth to a daughter. Mrs. Pendarves made much fun of the event. "It is a mighty mortification it was not a son. Sons and heirs ought to be out of fashion when such scrubs shall pretend to be dissatisfied at having a daughter; 'tis pity, indeed, that the noble name and family of the Sandonis should be extinct! The minute she was brought to bed she sang' La speranza,' a song in Otho."
Revivals of Rodelinda and Ottone took place in the following season, and, in March 1726, Handel produced Scipio, in which the famous march was heard for the first time on the rise of the curtain.
But Cuzzoni's throne was soon to be sharply contested. Ever since 1723 the directors of the opera had been trying to secure Faustina Bordoni, and at last, with a promise of £2,500 for the season (Cuzzoni received £2,000), they succeeded. Faustina was born of a patrician family at Venice in 1700; she had been brought up under the protection of Alessandro Marcello, brother of the well-known composer, and had made her debut at Venice at the age of sixteen. She sang mostly at Venice for several years, and in 1718 she appeared there in Pollaroli's Ariodante, along with Cuzzoni herself. She sang at Munich in 1723, and in the summer of 1725 she went to Vienna, where she stayed six months, enjoying an extraordinary success. Nearly forty years afterwards the Empress Maria Theresa recalled with pride how she herself, at the age of seven, had sung in an opera with Faustina. At the end of March 1726 she left Vienna for London, where she made her first appearance, on May 5, in Handel's new opera Alessandro, which had been designed especially to show off both Faustina and Cuzzoni in parts of exactly equal importance and difficulty. The immediate result was to divide London society into two parties: young Lady Burlington and her friends supported Faustina; Cuzzoni's admirers were led by Lady Pembroke. Lady Walpole succeeded in getting both to sing at her house; neither would sing in the presence of the other, but the hostess tactfully managed to draw first one and then the other out of the music-room while her rival enchanted the guests. Mrs. Pendarves also contrived to be on good terms with both. She heard Cuzzoni in November privately, or perhaps at a rehearsal, and writes, "my senses were ravished with harmony." The opera was expected to begin about the middle of December, "but I think Faustina and Madame Sandoni [i.e. Cuzzoni] are not perfectly agreed about their parts." The opening, however, was delayed by the absence of Senesino, who had gone to Italy and did not return until fairly late in December.
It was probably owing to this fact that opera in English was offered at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where Marcantonio Buononcini's Camilla, first given in London in 1706, was revived by a mainly English cast of singers. Mrs. Pendarves went to see it, and her criticisms are significant for the taste of the time. "I can't say I was much pleased with it, I liked it for old acquaintance sake, but there is not many of the songs better than ballads."
Faustina—"the most agreeable creature in the world in company"—dined with Mrs. Pendarves for a small musical party on January 26. On the previous day there was the first rehearsal of Handel's Admeto. It was the moment, says Burney, of Handel's greatest prosperity and English patronage. Admeto exhibited conspicuously what Dr. Burney called Handel's "science "; it was evidently considered to be complicated in style, though at the same time both pathetic and passionate. "Music," says Burney, "was no longer regarded as a mere soother of affliction, or incitement to hilarity; it could now paint the passions in all their various attitudes; and those tones which said nothing intelligible to the heart began to be thought as; insipid as those of 'sounding brass or tinkling cymbals.'" These words of Burney make one realise that Handel's London operas must have affected their audiences almost in the way in which the operas of Wagner startled the audiences of the nineteenth century. Handel himself, like Wagner, was steadily developing his own dramatic powers, and it is important to bear in mind that it was only those marvellous singers of Handel's day, such as Senesino, Cuzzoni, Faustina, and Boschi, who could inspire him to the creation of such music as they only were competent to interpret.
Admeto was received with respect, and although the partisans of the "rival queens" were noisy in their applause, no actual disturbance took place until Admeto was followed by Buononcini's Astyanax on May 6. On the first night of the new opera each side did its best to drown the opposite party's favourite with a chorus of catcalls. The behaviour of the audience became more and more disgraceful as the opera was repeated, until on the last night (June 6), when the Princess of Wales was present, Cuzzoni and Faustina delighted the sporting instincts of the nobility and gentry of England by indulging in a free fight on the stage.
Five days later George I died suddenly at Osnabruck. George II was crowned on October 11, to the music of Handel's Coronation Anthems. The opera season reopened a month later. Apparently the quarrel between Cuzzoni and Faustina had been patched up; probably neither of them wanted to lose their English contracts. They appeared together in Handel's Riccardo Primo, and again in Siroe (February 5, 1728), as well as in Tolomeo (April 30), but the battle seems to have been won by Cuzzoni, who obtained the more important parts. We hear of no more disturbances; the fact was that the audiences were too thin to be noisy.