Mainwaring relates that Cardinal Pamphili; on one occasion wrote a poem in honour of Handel and desired him to set it to music himself; in this poem "he was compared to Orpheus, and exalted above the rank of mortals." Later biographers, being unable to trace any music of Handel to this poem, assumed that Handel was too modest to sing his own praises; but he was not, for the original manuscript of the cantata was found by the present writer in the University Library at Münster in Westphalia. As Mainwaring informs us, Handel is compared by the poet (whose name is not given) to Orpheus and indeed exalted above him. "Orpheus," says the Cardinal, "could move rocks and trees, but he could not make them sing; therefore thou art greater than Orpheus, for thou compellest my aged Muse to song." The style of both words and music suggests that the whole cantata was thrown off, as Mainwaring suggests, on the spur of the moment, and this improvisation may well have taken place at one of the Arcadians' garden parties, for there is a well-known account of a similar improvisation by the poet Zappi and the composer Alessandro Scarlatti.
Handel was by this time fully accepted as one of the leading musicians in Italy, for in June he composed a pastoral, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, for the marriage of the Duke of Alvito at Naples on July 19. It was in July 1708 that the Austrian Viceroy of Naples, Count Daun, was succeeded by Cardinal Grimani, who, towards the end of the year, persuaded Alessandro Scarlatti to return to the service of the royal chapel. As a good friend to Scarlatti, the Cardinal was sure to interest himself in Handel, and it was probably through him that Handel was commissioned to write an opera for Venice, as the Grimani were a great Venetian family and owned the principal opera-house there. How long Handel stayed at Naples we do not know; all that Mainwaring tells us is that he was taken up by a Spanish princess, but, as Naples had belonged to Spain for a hundred and fifty years, Spanish princesses can have been no rarities there, and it is impossible to identify this lady.
From July 1708 until December 1709 we lose sight of Handel entirely. On December 26, the first night of the carnival season, his opera Agrippina was produced at Venice. The libretto was by Cardinal Grimani, who had already written other dramas for music, all produced, like Handel's, at the Teatro San Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice. Venice was the first city which had undertaken opera on a commercial basis, open to the public on payment, whereas in other places it depended for many years on the munificence of princes and nobles. At Venice there existed not one theatre, but several, devoted to opera, each called after the name of the parish in which it was situated, and, of these, the theatre of St. John Chrysostom, built by the Grimani family and still standing (though much remodelled) under the name of Teatro Malibran, was the largest and most important. The Inquisition took a more tolerant view of opera than the Pope; a Venetian preacher admonished actors and singers to remember that they "were abominated of God, but tolerated by the Government by desire of those who took delight in their iniquities."
Agrippina aroused an extraordinary enthusiasm. "The theatre, at almost every pause, resounded with shouts and acclamations of viva il taro Sassone! and other expressions of approbation too extravagant to be mentioned" (Mainwaring). The title part was sung by Margherita Durastanti, and another singer who appeared in the opera was Boschi, the famous bass; both of them were to sing for Handel in London later on. It is fairly certain that Boschi must have sung the part of Polyphemus in Handel's Italian Aci e Galatea at Naples, for it bears a striking resemblance to other songs written for Boschi, whose voice was of exceptional range. The opera ran for twenty-seven nights.
After this unprecedented triumph it seems surprising that Handel did not remain in Italy, where he had so many friends who could ensure his success. It is probable that by the time Agrippina was performed, if not indeed long before, he had been promised the post of Kapellmeister to the court of Hanover. The actual appointment is dated June 16, 1710. But no sooner was Handel appointed than he at once obtained leave of absence, and went on, first to Düsseldorf, and then to London. It was probably the Elector's intention that he should spend some time in foreign travel before taking up regular duty.
The three years which Handel spent in Italy at the most impressionable period of his life fixed the characteristics of his style as a composer, and we may well suppose that they exercised a decisive influence on his personality and character. His youth had been spent in the respectable middle-class environment of his home at Halle; then came the three years at Hamburg, fantastic and exciting, yet, despite all the artistic stimulus of Keiser's opera-house, inevitably sordid and provincial. Italy introduced him to an entirely different atmosphere—to a life of dignity and serenity in which a classical culture, both literary and artistic, was the matured fruit of wealth, leisure, and good breeding. That exquisite life found its highest musical expression in Alessandro Scarlatti, who at that period was incontestably the greatest of living musicians. On his style Handel formed his own, and it is interesting to note that of all Scarlatti's operas the one which most strikingly foreshadows the genius of Handel is Mitridate, which Handel may possibly have seen at Venice in the winter of 1707-08. The musical library of Handel's English friend Charles Jennens contained a large collection of Scarlatti's manuscripts, and there can be little doubt that it was Handel who brought them with him from Italy.
In Venice, Handel had made the acquaintance of Prince Ernest of Hanover, younger brother of the Elector Georg Ludwig who was eventually to become King of England as George I. With Prince Ernest was Baron Kielmansegge, who for many years afterwards remained a firm supporter of Handel, and another Venetian acquaintance was the Duke of Manchester, English Ambassador to the Republic of Venice. Through Prince Ernest, and Kielmansegge, Handel was recommended to the court of Hanover; the Duke of Manchester gave him a pressing invitation to England. Music in Hanover was under the direction of an Italian, Agostino Steffani, who was not only a musician but priest and diplomatist as well. Born at Castelfranco in 1654, he was taken as a boy to Munich, where he studied music, and, in 1680 entered the priesthood; he produced several operas there, and about 1689 became Kapellmeister to the court of Hanover. Here he was employed on important diplomatic business; Pope Innocent XI made him titular Bishop of Spiga in the West Indies, and in 1698 he was Ambassador at Brussels. In 1709 he became the Pope's representative for North Germany, and it was doubtless owing to his heavy ecclesiastical duties that he resigned his musical post in favour of Handel, although Hanover remained his chief place of residence until his death in 1728. He was in Rome in 1708 and 1709, and it has been suggested that he made Handel's acquaintance there, but this hardly seems consistent with Handel's own statement, recorded by Hawkins in his History of Music: "When I first arrived at Hanover I was a young man under twenty; I was acquainted with the merits of Steffani and he had heard of me. I understood somewhat of music, and could play pretty well on the organ; he received me with great kindness, and took an early opportunity to introduce me to the Princess Sophia and the Elector's son, giving them to understand that I was what he was pleased to call a virtuoso in music; he obliged me with instructions for my conduct and behaviour during my residence at Hanover; and being called from the city to attend to matters of a public concern, he left me in possession of that favour and patronage which himself had enjoyed for a series of years." These statements of Handel seem, in fact, to point to his having visited Hanover before he went to Italy, possibly before he went to Hamburg, or, more probably, during the course of his Hamburg period, in which case one might conclude that the Electress Sophia had defrayed the cost of Handel's Italian journey. Even if Handel made a mistake as to his age, he clearly implies that his first meeting with Steffani took place in Hanover.
At Düsseldorf, Handel was sure of a warm welcome, for the Elector Johann Wilhelm was a close friend of Steffani, and his wife was a sister of Ferdinand and Gian Gastone de' Medici; he was a man of extravagant tastes, and his opera-house was maintained on the most magnificent scale. But Handel did not stay there long; England was a greater attraction, and he arrived in London for the first time in the autumn of 1710.
Nothing is known of Handel's early days in London, but it may be safely assumed that he was provided with letters of introduction to persons of influence. We meet him first in the company of Heidegger, a Swiss adventurer who achieved notoriety through his incredible ugliness, and from 1709 onwards was concerned in the management of the opera at the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket. Through Heidegger, Handel was introduced to Mary Granville, then a little girl of ten, whom he delighted by his performance on her own spinet. Her uncle, Sir John Stanley, asked her if she thought she should ever play as well as Mr. Handel. "If I did not think I should," she cried, "I would burn my instrument!" Mary Granville, who, seven years later, married a Mr. Pendarves, and in 1743 became the wife of Dr. Delany, was for many years one of Handel's most faithful friends and supporters.
In the reign of Queen Anne the musical life of London was developing in a new fashion as compared with what it was in the last twenty years of the previous century. The type of English opera which Purcell and Dryden had created came to an end with Purcell's death in 1695. Italian music, especially when sung by Italian singers, was gradually becoming more and more popular with London concert-audiences, and in 1705 Thomas Clayton produced at Drury Lane an opera called Arsinoe, Queen of Cyprus. Clayton had visited Italy, and had brought back with him a collection of Italian songs; he got Peter Motteux to translate for him an old Italian opera libretto, and adapted these songs to it. How much of Arsinoe was Clayton's own work is not known; Burney speaks of the opera with nothing but contempt. Yet it seems to have had some fair success, and was even revived the following year; but Clayton's Rosamond, to a libretto by Addison, did not survive three performances. It was followed by a series of Italian operas composed by Buononcini, Scarlatti, and others; at first the operas were in English, and sung by English singers, but gradually Italian was introduced, as at Hamburg, and in 1710 an opera called Almahide, the music of which Burney ascribes conjecturally to Buononcini, was given in Italian with an entirely Italian company. The victory of the Italians was due mainly to the marvellous singing and acting of Nicola Grimaldi, known as Nicolini, who first appeared in London in Scarlatti's Pyrrhus and Demetrius. Nicolini was not the first castrato who had been heard in England; the famous Siface had been brought over by Queen Mary of Modena in 1687. But Nicolini was the first who appeared on the English stage, and it was he who paved the way for Senesino, Farinelli, and the rest, and established that annual season of Italian opera which is not yet extinct.