of Hanover, Ernest Augustus, and the Duke of Manchester, the English Ambassador Extraordinary at Venice, were both passionate music-lovers, and interested themselves in Handel. The first invitations which Handel received to go to Hanover, and to London, dated doubtless from that time.
But if the visit to Venice was not fruitless to the future of Handel, it brought him very little at the time. Handel could produce nothing at any of the seven opera houses.[1] He was much happier at Rome, where he returned at the beginning of March, 1708.[2] The renown of his Roderigo had preceded him. All the Italian merchants strove to receive him with honour. He was the guest of the Marquis Ruspoli, whose gardens on the Esquilino formed the bond of reunion for the Academy of the Arcadians.[3] Handel found himself agreeably placed amongst the most illustrious men which Italy boasted in literature, the arts, and in the aristocracy. Arcadia, which united the nobility and the artists,[4] in a spiritual brotherhood, counted amongst its members,
- ↑ This appears thoroughly established by recent researches, and contradicts the statement of Chrysander that Handel's Agrippina had been played at the commencement of 1708 at Venice. All the documents of that time agree in placing the first production of Agrippina at the end of 1709 or at the beginning of 1710.
- ↑ An autograph cantata by Handel, which is found in London, was dated Rome, March 3, 1708.
- ↑ This Academy was founded at Rome in 1690 for the production and exposition of popular poetry and rhetoric.
- ↑ Amongst the "shepherds" of Arcadia were counted four Popes (Clement XI, Innocent XIII, Clement XII, Benoit XIII), nearly all the sacred colleges, the Princes of Bavaria, Poland, Portugal; the Queen of Poland, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, and a crowd of great lords and ladies.
