Page:Queens of Song.djvu/65

Rh and insolence, are placed on record by the author of the Essai sur la Musique, printed at Paris. He relates that she once begged of an English gentleman a suit of lace, but, not liking it when sent to her, she had the audacity to throw it on the fire.

Having driven Durastanti away, and finding that Anastasia Robinson had quitted the stage immediately after her arrival in England, Cuzzoni fancied that she could do just as she pleased. But she had worn out the patience of the great composer whom it was her special deligt to torture; and wearied with her follies, Handel never rested till he had obtained the services of another singer who was then rising into fame. This was Faustina Bordoni, a Venetian lady of noble family, a pupil of Gasparini and Marcello. She was elegant in figure, and possessed the advantages of a handsome face and agreeable manners. She was now six-and-twenty, and had made her début in her native city at the age of sixteen, in 1716, in an opera called Ariodante.

The directors were in ecstasies; they felt sure that with two such exquisite voices, forming so brilliant a contrast, and yet so harmonious, the Opera was made. Nor was it the first time that these vocalists had appeared together, for they had both been engaged at Venice in 1719, just seven years before. Unfortunately, the directors did not take into consideration Cuzzoni's peculiar disposition. Faustina appeared first in Alexander, May 5th, in which she was ably supported by Senesino as the heroic Alexander.

From the night of her first appearance, Cuzzoni hated Faustina with a bitterness beyond expression. During the season previous, that of 1725, such was the furore for Cuzzoni, that the entire female fashionable world adopted the brown silk dress, embroidered with silver, which she wore in the opera of Rodelinda: "for a year the dress seemed a national uniform of youth and beauty," Burney says. And she was so secure of being able to dictate her own terms, that she disdainfully refused 240,000 livres offered by a director in Italy who desired to engage her for his theatre. But Cuzzoni foresaw, or chose to prophesy, that the beauty and amiability of her rival would eclipse her.

Faustina was in every way a contrast to her rival. She had the advantage in point of person, having a form of perfect