availed himself to place the Dresden opera on the most complete and splendid footing. At length, however, the weak, proud, and extravagant royal amateur was compelled to dismiss numbers from his service; among others, Hasse and his wife, who were obliged to be satisfied with a small pension. They came to England in 1740, where they were received most flatteringly.
In December, 1747, Faustina sang before Frederick the Great in the opera of Arminio; the monarch was so charmed with the freshness of her voice, although she was then forty-six, that he sent the composer a present of 1000 dollars and a diamond ring, as tokens of the pleasure he had received from the performance. Eight years after she was still able to sing, but her voice had lost its flexibility, and her intonation was uncertain. She finally quitted the stage in the winter of 1753.
In 1760, Hasse suffered much from the bombardment of Dresden by the Prussians, losing, among other property, all his manuscripts. This was a heavy loss, as he was about to publish a complete collection of his works, the expense of which the king had promised to defray. He resided with Faustina in Vienna till about 1776, when they retired to Venice, the birthplace of Faustina. Dr. Burney visited them in 1773, when they were living in a handsome house in the Landstrass, Berlin, and were rather a humdrum couple; Hasse suffering from the gout, and the lovely Faustina of former years changed into a jolly, chatty matron of seventy-two, with a couple of pretty daughters. As the doctor approached their residence with the Abate Taruffi, he perceived Faustina at the window, who, seeing them stop at the door, came to meet her visitors. "I was presented to her by my conductor," says the doctor. "She is a short, brown, sensible, and lively old woman, and said she was much pleased to see a cavaliere Inglese, as she had been honored with great marks of favor in England. Signor Hasse soon entered the room. He is tall and rather large in size, but it is easy to imagine that in his younger days he must have been a robust and fine figure: great gentleness and goodness appear in his countenance and manners."
Going to see them a second time, the doctor found all the family at home, and enjoyed a "cheerful and social visit." He was delighted with Faustina, who, he says, was "very conversable, and still possessed of much curiosity concerning what is
