CHAPTER V.
RIVAL QUEENS—FRANCESCA CUZZONI AND FAUSTINA BORDONI.
These famous sirens were the heroines of one of the greatest feuds recorded in the annals of the Italian stage. Little is known of the early career of either; but they had gained sufficient reputation to induce Handel, when at the height of his power as manager of the Opera, to bring, first the one and then the other, to England.
Francesca Cuzzoni, who was a native of Parma, arrived in London about the year 1723, and appeared for the first time that year in Handel's Otho (or Ottone), the most popular of all his operas. Her success was triumphant, and the directors, who gave her two thousand guineas for the season, were enabled, on the very second evening of her performance, to charge four guineas each ticket.
Delighted with her powers, Handel took the utmost pains to compose airs adapted to display her exquisite voice to advantage; but in return she treated him with caprice and insolence; which at last became intolerable. One morning, at rehearsal, she was so refractory that she could not be persuaded to sing "Falsa imagina," in Otho, having raised some frivolous objections to certain passages in it. Handel, after reproaching her with certain former instances of stubbornness, seized her round the waist, and swore, if she persisted in her obstinacy, that he would fling her out of the window; a threat which, for the time being, brought her to her senses. He composed for her, among other airs calculated to show her voice to advantage, "Affanni del pensier," in Otho; an air so beautiful, that Mainwaring, an eminent master, who was not on good terms with Handel, said that "the great bear was certainly inspired when he wrote that song."
Her popularity was unbounded; and, although she was so "ugly and ill-made," she was a special favorite with the gentlemen of her audience, a fact commemorated by sundry pungent epigrams. Her turbulent and obstinate temper, her in-
