The English nobility, having set Handel this example, claimed their own rights, and organised a rival opera-house at Lincoln's Inn Fields. They had no difficulty in seducing, first Senesino, then Montagnana, and finally Heidegger. Only Strada remained faithful to Handel. Buononcini having lost their favour, they engaged as composer the Neapolitan Nicolo Porpora, famous then as a great trainer of singers, and still more famous in later years as the teacher of Haydn. If Handel had the King and Queen on his side, the nobility could count on the support of Frederick Prince of Wales, who was immensely popular throughout the country and was on the worst possible terms with his royal parents. The Opera of the Nobility, as the new syndicate was called, was making its plans in good time, directly after the end of Handel's season.
In July 1733, Handel was invited to Oxford for a series of performances of his works, and it was proposed to confer on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Music. The Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Holmes, was a loyal Hanoverian, and hoped by honouring Handel to do something to counteract the Jacobite reputation of the University. Esther and Deborah were performed, as well as the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate, and the Coronation Anthems; Handel further provided a new oratorio, Athaliah. The degree he refused to accept, for what reason has never been explained. Various suggestions have been offered. The Abbé Prevost, who was in England at the time, says that he refused the degree out of modesty; later biographers have differed in their views as to whether modesty was one of Handel's characteristics. Others have supposed that he refused to pay the fee of £100 that was demanded, but it is inconceivable that a fee should have been demanded for an honorary degree, although it would naturally have been paid by candidates who took the degree in the normal way. The concerts were attended by large audiences, many music lovers coming over from Eton and Cambridge, although there was considerable resentment at the price of admission—five shillings, a small amount compared with Handel's London charges. This "Handel Festival" at Oxford is significant, for it shows that in the space of no more than a year oratorio had begun to make a wide appeal, even outside London, although it was a form of composition that was new to English audiences. Esther, considered as a masque to be acted, might be said to continue the English traditions of the previous century, but there was no precedent in England for anything like Esther in concert form. The only English works which offered anything remotely like oratorio were the odes of Purcell and Blow for the musicians' festivals on St. Cecilia's Day, apart from the greater services and anthems of Purcell, which were composed, not for entertainment, but for liturgical use.
After the Oxford concerts, Handel and Schmidt went to Italy to look for singers. They heard Farinelli, the most famous castrato of the century, but did not engage him; perhaps his demands were too high. The castrato whom they did engage was Carestini, who, though less celebrated, was at any rate a singularly artistic singer. Durastanti came back, and, in place of Montagnana, Handel contented himself with Waltz, a German, who is often described as having been Handel's cook. Burney, at any rate, recorded that he was said to have filled this office, but Burney remembered him chiefly as a popular comic singer. He had sung Polyphemus in Arne's pirated performance of Acis and Galatea, and owing to the defection of Montagnana, took his place in Athaliah at Oxford. He had "a coarse figure and a still coarser voice" (Burney).
Handel opened his season on October 30, 1733. He had already finished the composition of a new opera, Ariadne, but it was not brought out until January 26, 1734. The reason, no doubt, was that an opera on the same subject by Porpora was produced by the Opera of the Nobility on December 29. Handel would no doubt have heard that it was in rehearsal, and have postponed his own production until he could see how Porpora's was succeeding. The two operas obtained the same number of performances, but Handel's theatre was seldom full, and many opera-goers were dissatisfied at his giving them oratorios, such as Deborah and Acis, on opera nights; these, however, seem to have been commanded by the King, and that in itself would make them all the more unpopular.
In March the Princess Royal was married to the Prince of Orange, and Handel was commissioned to write a wedding anthem. He also provided a secular entertainment in the shape of Parnaso in festa, described as a serenata. It was not unlike a masque; Apollo and the Muses appeared in costume on Mount Parnassus, but apparently there was no acting. The music was adapted from Athaliah, which, so far, had only been heard at Oxford. Oratorio was also attempted by Handel's rival; Mrs. Pendarves heard a work of his at Lincoln's Inn Fields in March. "It is a fine solemn piece of music," she wrote, "but I confess I think the subject too solemn for a theatre. To have words of piety made use of only to introduce good music, is reversing what it ought to be, and most of the people that hear the oratorio make no reflection on the meaning of the words, though God is addressed in the most solemn manner." Needless to say, it was "not equal to Mr. Handel's oratorio of Esther or Deborah." Mrs. Pendarves was at this time a near neighbour of Handel's in Lower Brook Street; one of her letters describes a small musical party (her musical parties were always small) a month later. Apparently there were not more than ten guests, including Lord Shaftesbury, who begged another guest to bring him, and was admitted as being "a profess'd friend of Mr. Handel"; the only professional musicians present were Handel and Strada. "I never was so well entertained at an opera! Mr. Handel was in the best humour in the world, and played lessons and accompanied Strada and all the ladies that sung from seven o' the clock till eleven." In such company Handel could evidently be more agreeable than on the stage at rehearsals, and it is interesting to note that the amateurs had no timidity about singing before Strada, and that Handel was willing to accompany all of them alike.
In July 1734, Handel's lease of the King's Theatre came to an end, and he found the theatre let at once by some means to his rivals, the Opera of the Nobility. He therefore entered into an arrangement with Rich for the use of his new theatre in Covent Garden, but his autumn season actually opened at Lincoln's Inn Fields on October 5. The probable reason for this was that the Princess Anne was spending the summer in England and wished to hear some of Handel's operas. She was a remarkably gifted musician, and Handel considered her to be the best of his pupils; she not only sang and played the harpsichord well, but was thoroughly grounded in the theoretical side of music and quite capable of composing a fugue, according to a Dutch musician who became acquainted with her after her marriage. She came to England on July 2 for a long stay, and at once persuaded Handel to give three additional performances of Il Pastor Fido, which he had revived that season. Pastor Fido and Ariadne were given again for her in October; probably Covent Garden was not quite ready for performances. Princess Anne left England on October 21, and her last words at parting were to beg Lord Hervey to do all he could to help Handel.
The chief attraction to the public at Covent Garden was probably not Handel but Mlle Sallé, a French dancer who had been engaged by Rich. The first performance at the new theatre was a ballet, Terpsichore, in order that she might inaugurate the season. Terpsichore, which includes songs and a chorus, served as prologue to Il Pastor Fido. The next opera was Oreste, a pasticcio made up by Handel himself from his own works; on January 8, 1735, he produced his Ariodante, an opera over which he had spent the unusually long time of ten weeks. The score was begun on August 12 and finished on October 24. The story is taken from Ariosto, and, as with Orlando, Handel found that it afforded opportunities for his peculiar vein of romanticism. On April 16 he followed it up with Alcina, again on a subject from Ariosto, and one of even more romantic character. Ariosto's enchantress Alcina was the model for Tasso's better-known Armida, who provided both Lulli and Gluck with one of their most dramatic heroines, and Burney says, with some justice, that Handel's Alcina gave birth to all the Armidas and Rinaldos of modern times. Both Ariodante and Alcina contained a large amount of ballet music, and the dances in Alcina, intermingled with choruses in the French manner, are among Handel's most attractive compositions.
Mrs. Pendarves, after the rehearsal of Alcina, described Handel as himself "a necromancer in the midst of his own enchantments," but he could not prevail against the enchantments of Farinelli, who had been engaged by the rival opera company. There could be no competing against a combination that included along with him Senesino, Cuzzoni, and Montagnana. The one powerful counter-attraction that Handel could offer was oratorio on Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent, when operas were not allowed to be given. Porpora's David, which the rival management put on, had no chance against Esther, Deborah, and Athaliah. Alcina carried the Opera on to the end of the season, the well-known air "Verdi prati," which Carestini had at first refused to sing, being encored at every performance. Handel's alleged angry retort to Carestini in comical broken English has been often quoted from Burney; but Schoelcher very sensibly observed that Handel was pretty certain to have conversed with Carestini in Italian.
The newspapers informed the world in May that Handel was going to spend the summer in Germany. His health had been seriously undermined, and it may well have been possible that he had talked of taking a cure at Aix-la-Chapelle; but on this occasion he went no farther than Tunbridge Wells. It was probably in the earlier part of 1735 that he made the acquaintance of Charles Jennens, a young man who was eventually to play a great part in his life, for on July 28 he wrote to Jennens to say that he was just starting for Tunbridge.
The letter is so short that it may be quoted here in full, for it gives us a great deal of interesting information.