Handel’s Music Room – Furniture & Artwork
Left:
Title: Willem de Fesch
Artist: Andrea Soldi
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: c.1750
Collection: The Byrne Collection, Handel House Trust
The Dutch violinist and composer, Willem de Fesch (1687-1761) is known to have rehearsed with Handel here at Brook Street. De Fesch arrived in London in the 1730s after being sacked as musical director at Antwerp Cathedral where he developed a reputation as temperamental, mean and slovenly. He spent the rest of his life in London.
Middle:
Title: Faustina Bordoni
Artist: Bartolomeo Nazari
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: c. 1734
Collection: Handel House Trust
The celebrated soprano Faustina Bordoni arrived in London in May 1726 to sing for Handel’s company. Alongside the castrato Senesino, and the soprano Francesca Cuzzoni, Handel had now engaged three of the greatest singers in Europe. However, the combination proved disastrous as the inevitable rivalry between the fans of the two sopranos began to resemble open warfare. Handel wrote the score of Alessandro (first performed on 5 May 1726) providing equal opportunities for his two female leads to display their individual talents but his efforts were in vain. During the run of Handel’s Admeto (first performed 31 January 1727) the hostility caused uproar in the theatre and resulted in the immediate publication of satirical pamphlets. The sopranos and their rival fans finally came to blows on stage on the 6th June 1727, during Bonocini’s Astianatte. The performance had to be abandoned.
Right:
Title: Richard Leveridge
Artist: Unknown
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: c. 1710-1720
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Richard Leveridge was born in London c.1670 and died in 1758. He was a bass singer and composer and worked with both Handel and Purcell. He sung in the first performances of Handel’s Il pastor fido and Teseo, and in a revival of Rinaldo in 1713-14 before defecting to the rival Lincoln’s Inn Fields company. However, he returned to Handel in 1731 to play Polyphemus in the first public performance of Acis and Galatea. Leveridge also translated many of Handel’s Italian arias into English.
Title: The Ladies Lamentation for the Loss of Senesino, from Bickham’s Musical Entertainment
Medium: Etching and Print on Paper
Date: Unknown
Collection: Handel House Trust
It is possible that the two women grasping the hands of the castrato Senesino are intended to represent the singers Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni. The ‘Lamentation’ is a mildly satirical song marking the return of the star singer to his native Italy.
Title: The Laughing Audience
Artist: after William Hogarth
Medium: Etching with contemporary hand colouring
Date: 1784
Collection: Handel House Trust
Title: Concerto Spirituale
Artist: Bretherton
Medium: Engraving
Date: 1773
Collection: Handel House Trust
Title: Signora Faustina Bordoni
Artist: C. Grignion after Rosalba
Medium: Line engraving with some etching
Date: Unknown
Collection: Handel House Trust
The celebrated soprano Faustina Bordoni, who was married to her singing teacher Johann Adolf Hasse, arrived in London in the May of 1726. Bordoni found herself caught in a bitter rivalry with fellow soprano, Francesca Cuzzoni causing a rivalry between their fans, which began to resemble open warfare. The two sopranos finally came to blows on stage on the 6th June 1727, during Bonocini’s Astianatte.
Title: Francesca Cuzzoni Sandoni, da Parma
Artist: C. Grignion after Rosalba
Medium: Line engraving with some etching
Date: c. 1760-90
Collection: Handel House Trust
Like her rival Bordoni, Cuzzoni was a remarkably talented and popular Italian soprano, and was also employed by Handel’s Royal Academy, having arrived in London in 1722. Her voice was so exquisite that during her performance as Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare -a role for which Handel wrote an unprecedented eight arias- a cry came from the balcony “Damn her! She’s got a nest of nightingales in her belly!” Her relationship with Handel was often stormy, as she was a notoriously fiery woman. Despite this, Handel created some of his finest roles for her, and she remained with the company for six years before being lured away (no doubt with the promise of higher fees) by the Opera of the Nobility.
Title: Gioacchino Conti Gizziello
Artist: Alexander van Haecken after Charles Lucy
Medium: Mezzotint
Date: Unknown
Collection: Handel House Trust
According to Charles Jennens, Handel considered the young castrato Gizziello “a rising star”, excited by his extraordinary vocal range. He had a high soprano voice and Handel was able to write music for him that went up to a high C. Gizziello had a rivalry with the castrato Caffarelli but while Caffarelli was known to be a demanding and difficult character, Gizziello was known to be rather shy and sweet natured.
Title: Francesco Bernardi, detto il Senesino
Artist: Joseph Goupy after Elisha Kirkhall
Medium: Mezzotint
Date: 1727
Collection: Handel House Trust
Senesino arrived in London in September 1720 and, until the early 1730s, sang the lead in the first performances of Handel’s Royal Academy operas including Ottone, Flavio, Giulio Cesare and Tamerlano. The singer’s popularity, particularly amongst the female members of the opera-going public, prompted John Gay to write, with more than a hint of irony, that Senesino was “daily voted to be the greatest man that ever lived”. In contrast, Handel is recorded as calling him “a damned fool” at his defection to the Opera of the Nobility in 1733.
Title: Vaux Hall
Artist: Attributed to Thomas Rowlandson, Fr. Jukes, and R. Pollard
Medium: Aquatint
Date: Unknown
Collection: Handel House Trust
This group portrait depicts one of the most fashionable of London’s pleasure gardens. At the right, the Prince of Wales, the future George IV, whispers to his lover, the actress Perdita Robinson. Figures under the central tree include Captain Topham, owner and editor of The World, the Duchess of Devonshire and the Lady Bessborough, the Admiral Paisley on the Duchess’s right as well as Sir Hendry Bate-Dudley, editor of the Morning Herald and James Perry, editor of the Morning Chronicle, under the tree in Highland dress.
Title: Carlo Broschi Farinelli
Artist: Alexander van Haeken after Charles Lucy
Medium: Mezzotint
Date: Unknown
Collection: Handel House Trust
Farinelli was without question the most famous singer of his age, and yet he never sang for Handel, singing instead for rival opera company, the Opera of the nobility. Farinelli only sang in one Handel opera, Ottone, which was revived by the Opera of the Nobility in 1734. However even then he sang none of the original arias linked to his role, singing five arias from a selection of other Handel operas instead. After his triumph in London, he left to work for the Queen of Spain who believed his singing could cure the mental illness of her husband, Philip V. Amazingly, this seemed to do wonders for the King, and Farinelli stayed on at court and embarked on another brilliant career as a confidant of the royal family. He eventually retired with a great fortune to his home city of Bologna.
Title: Giovanni Carestini
Artist: John Faber after George Knapton
Medium: Mezzotint
Date: 1735
Collection: Handel House Trust
The castrato, Giovanni Carestini (c.1705-60), sang the male lead in Ariodante, Terpsicore and several other Handel operas and was said to be an excellent actor. His salary was one of the highest in Europe. Carestini, like Cuzzoni, met the full force of Handel’s rage when he refused to sing the aria ‘Verdi prati’ from Alcina.
Title: John Rich
Artist: Attributed to William Hogarth
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: presumed London, between 1750 and 1761
Collection: The Benson Family Private Collection
John Rich was manager of both the New Theatre at Lincoln’s Inn Fields (1714) and the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden (1732-1761). This portrait was recently discovered hanging above the fireplace in the Benson family home. The Benson family, who has always admired the painting, were unsure of who it was portraying. Since discovering it is of John Rich, an ancestor of theirs, the family have had it cleaned and examined at the Tate. It is believed that this portrait was painted by William Hogarth. Handel House is delighted to host the portrait for its first public outing.
Title: Kitty Clive
Artist: Alexander van Aken after [Jeremiah Davison and] Joseph Aken
Medium: Mezzotint engraving
Date: 1735
Collection: Handel House Trust
Kitty Clive was another of Handel’s singers who, like Susanna Cibber, was better known as an actress. Handel wrote for her the song ‘I Like the Am’rous Youth That’s Free’ which she performed during the play Universal Passion at Drury Lane in 1737. She sang in the first performance of L’Allegro ed il Penseroso ed il Moderato, in the first London performance of Messiah and took the role of Dalila in Samson in 1743.
Title: Susannah Cibber
Artist: John Faber after Thomas Hudson
Medium: Mezzotint engraving
Date: 1746
Collection: Handel House Trust
Amongst his English singers Handel’s favourite appears to have been Susannah Cibber (1714-66), sister of the composer Thomas Arne. Burney recalled that Handel “was very fond of Mrs Cibber, whose voice and manners had softened his severity for her want of musical knowledge”. On 13th April 1742, she sang in the first performance of Messiah in Dublin (she had fled London due to a scandal caused by her husband accusing her of infidelity) during which her emotional interpretation of ‘He was despised’ prompted the Rev Patrick Delany to cry out, “Woman, for this, be all thy sins forgiven!”.
Bureau Organ
By John Snetzler, 1752
Johann (later John) Snetzler was born in 1710 in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. He came to London in the early 1740s and was established in business by 1747. He first found wide popular recognition for his work on the organ for St Margaret’s, Kings Lynn in 1754. He became a British Citizen in 1770.
This instrument is typical of the small domestic ‘bureau’ organs that Snetzler made from the 1750s onwards. Demand for organs like this followed the popularity of Handel’s organ concertos, which he had written to be played in the intervals of his oratorios in the late 1730s.
In 1745, Snetzler worked with harpsichord maker Jacob Kirkman to create a claviorgan – a hybrid instrument combining the strings of the harpsichord with organ pipes. It is possible that Handel used an instrument like this during performances of Saul at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket in 1739.
The organ case is made of mahogany and it has black keys with white ivory accidentals.
