The music, in fact, was completed in
a fortnight, and the opera of _Rinaldo_ was first produced on the stage on
February 24, 1711. To judge from Burney's account of the preceding weeks
of the season, coupled with this astonishingly rapid collaboration, it is
probable that Hill was in a difficult situation, from which only a new and
strikingly successful opera could save him. _Rinaldo_ achieved the desired
success; it did more, it established Handel's reputation in England as a
dramatic composer, and set London a new standard in Italian opera. The
previous Italian operas had been works of little distinction, and some of
them had even been _pasticcio_ operas, as they were called, put together
from songs by various composers. Even Scarlatti's _Pyrrhus and Demetrius_
paled beside the new opera of Handel, for it had been written as far back
as 1694, and was in a style which Scarlatti himself had long abandoned.
_Rinaldo_ had fifteen performances in the course of the season. It provoked
bitter attacks from Addison in the _Spectator_ and from Steele in the
_Tatler_, but everybody knew that Addison's vanity was wounded by the
grotesque failure of _Rosamond_, and that Steele had interests in the
playhouse. It was useless at that particular moment to champion the cause
of English opera, for England happened to possess not a single composer who
was equal to the task of writing one.
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