3. Italy.

Mainwaring relates that ‘the Prince of Tuscany’, while visiting Hamburg, sought Handel out and met him several times, showing him examples of the latest Italian music and assuring him ‘that there needed nothing but a journey to Italy to reconcile him to the style and taste which prevailed there’. The reference seems to be to Gian' Gastone de Medici, younger brother of Ferdinando de Medici, who travelled in Germany (Ferdinando, heir to Grand Duke Cosimo III, died in 1713, leaving Gian' Gastone to succeed in 1723). Handel is said to have refused an invitation to return with the prince to Italy, but instead resolved ‘to go to Italy on his own bottom, as soon as he could make a purse for that occasion’. The journey seems to have been undertaken in the second half of 1706, and Handel may well have taken the advantage of Gian' Gastone's interest to present himself to Ferdinando at Florence, but his movements in this year are uncertain. By the beginning of 1707 he had reached Rome. His earliest patrons there were the cardinals Carlo Colonna and Benedetto Pamphili, and probably also Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni at whose concerts, says Mainwaring, Handel ‘was desired to furnish his quota’ of compositions; the latter remark must however be taken generally, as there is no confirmation that Handel wrote anything for Ottoboni. The most important compositions of the early months in Rome were for the church – perhaps surprisingly in view of Handel's Lutheran faith, but signifying a determination to display the full range of his compositional skills. It was probably Colonna who commissioned the large-scale setting of the psalm Dixit Dominus, completed early in April 1707, as well as settings of two other Vesper psalms (Laudate pueri and Nisi Dominus) in July. The latter (if not the Dixit) were performed with a motet and two short antiphon settings in services for the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel on 15–16 July 1707. The Italian sacred cantata Donna che in ciel, commemorating the anniversary of the delivery of Rome from an earthquake on 2 February, also probably belongs to 1707, though the year is not certain.

Early in 1707 Handel composed a substantial solo cantata, Da quel giorno fatale (Delirio amoroso) on a text by Pamphili, and by May that year he had received from Pamphili his first major Italian libretto to set. It was not an opera, because a papal ban forbade public operatic performances in Rome, but an allegorical oratorio, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno. In the same month he joined the household of his most important secular patron in Rome, the Marquess (later Prince) Francesco Maria Ruspoli, working partly at the Bonelli Palace in Rome and partly on Ruspoli's country estate at Vignanello, and collaborating with such excellent musicians as the soprano Margherita Durastanti. Among his earliest assignments for Ruspoli were two motets and a setting of the Salve regina for the church at Vignanello, and the little hunting cantata Diana cacciatrice. Otherwise Handel provided chamber cantatas for Ruspoli's weekly assemblies in Rome and larger cantatas for special occasions. A sequence of French songs and a cantata in Spanish were no doubt responses to special challenges. The lengthy cantata Clori, Tirsi e Fileno, performed in the early autumn, closed this period with Ruspoli. Meanwhile, Handel must already have drafted the score of his first all-Italian opera, almost certainly commissioned by Ferdinando de' Medici. It was produced at the Cocomero theatre in Florence, probably in October 1707, under the title Vincer se stesso è il maggior vittoria, but known to Mainwaring and posterity as Rodrigo. The opera shows the benefits of his Italian studies, showing touches of new elegance in several arias and confident handling of the language in the recitatives.

It is in connection with Rodrigo that Mainwaring brings in the name of a singer, Vittoria, coyly hinting at an affair with the composer that began in Florence and was later resumed in Venice. The reference seems to be to the soprano Vittoria Tarquini, who, Mainwaring implies, turned her attention to Handel after a liaison with the bisexual Ferdinando. The fact that she is not listed in the cast of Rodrigo casts doubt on Mainwaring's story, but in 1710 the Electress Sophia, discussing Handel's appointment to the Hanover court, mentions gossip that Handel had been the lover of Vittoria (‘amant de la Victoria’). No other evidence of a sexual attachment is known for the rest of his life, though an early annotator of Mainwaring hints at occasional discreet affairs with women, adding that ‘his amours were rather of short duration, always with[in] the pale of his own profession’.

In the absence of any report of Handel's movements in winter 1707–8, it is likely that he returned to Hamburg to direct the productions of Florindo and Daphne. The documentary record resumes in Rome, where, working once more for Ruspoli, Handel composed the dazzling score of his second oratorio La resurrezione in time for performance at the Bonelli palace on Easter Sunday (8 April) 1708. A specially designed set was prepared for the performance, with a backdrop illustrating scenes from the story, and the massive orchestra (at least 45 players) was led by Arcangelo Corelli. This unacted work illustrates Handel's dramatic flair more strikingly than any previous composition, not only in its characterizations (the blustering Lucifer, the grief-stricken yet resolute Mary Magdalene) but also in such effects as the Angel's interruption of the overture with a trumpet aria of great brilliance. His next major work was the dramatic cantata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, written on a visit to Naples in June 1708, and almost certainly commissioned by the Duchess of Laurenzano for the wedding of her niece to the Duke of Alvito; she is the mysterious princess named as ‘Donna Laura’ in Mainwaring's account. Details of the actual performance are unfortunately not known, but the work must have created astonishment with its writing for the bass voice of Polyphemus, demanding a range of two-and-a-half octaves.

After the Naples interlude Handel's movements are uncertain, though further excursions to Florence and Venice are likely. He was in Venice at the end of 1709, when his second Italian opera, the satirical comedy Agrippina, opened the carnival season at the S Giovanni Grisostomo theatre on 26 December with enormous success. This was the season most popular with visitors, and Handel's triumph before the international audience at once established a worldwide reputation and provided him with influential contacts. Among the latter were probably Prince Ernst Georg of Hanover, brother of the elector (the future George I of England), and the Duke of Manchester (the English ambassador), both of whom may have issued invitations for Handel to visit their respective countries. Much of the music of Agrippina was drawn from works Handel had composed earlier in Italy (with a little admixture of material from Keiser) and shows an assured mastery of the Italian idiom, the music more certainly reflecting character and dramatic context than in Rodrigo.

Handel, George Frideric