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74, using his genius for twenty years in the paradoxical task of thrusting on London a shaky and shallow Italian opera, which could not live under a sun and in a climate unsuitable to it. At the end of this strife, enraged, conquered, but invincible, sowing on his way all his masterpieces, he reached the pinnacle of his art—those grand oratorios which rendered him immortal.

After a voyage in Germany to Hanover, to Halle, to Düsseldorf, and to Dresden, to recruit for his troupe of Italian singers, Handel inaugurated at the Haymarket Theatre the London Opera of April 27, 1720, with his Radamisto, which was dedicated to the King. The rush of the public was very great indeed, but it was due more to curiosity than to the turn of the fashion. Soon the snobbishness of the amateurs could no longer content itself with Italianized German as the representative of Italian Opera, and finally Lord Burlington, Handel's former patron, went to Rome to induce the king of the Italian style, Giovanni Bononcini, to come over.

Bononcini came from Modena. He was about fifty years old, son of an artist of great merit,