The date of Handel's departure from Hamburg is unknown, nor have we the
slightest information as to his whereabouts until we hear of him at Rome in
January 1707. Chrysander's statement that he spent Christmas 1706 with his
mother at Halle is manifestly untrue. Mattheson says that he travelled to
Rome with a Herr von Binitz, but nothing is known of this gentleman. His
most natural route into Italy would be by the Brenner, the historic road of
all German pilgrims.
Handel may well have been glad to leave Hamburg, but Hamburg did not forget
him. He is mentioned in a theatrical manifesto of 1708 as being already
"beloved and celebrated in Italy"; Barthold Feind, one of the Hamburg
librettists, who in 1715 translated Handel's _Rinaldo_, called him "the
incomparable Handel, the Orpheus of our time"; and from 1715 to 1734 almost
all of Handel's London operas were represented on the Hamburg stage.
CHAPTER II
Arrival in Italy--_Rodrigo_--Rome: Cardinal Ottoboni and the
Scarlattis--Naples: Venice: _Agrippina_--appointment at Hanover--London:
_Rinaldo_.
Handel spent three years in Italy. The known facts about his life there are
singularly few, and his biographers have often had to draw copiously on
their imagination.
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