The German-born Handel, after spending some of his early career composing operas and other pieces in Italy, settled in London, where in 1711 he had brought Italian opera for the first time with his opera
Rinaldo. An enormous success,
Rinaldo created a craze in London for Italian
opera seria, a form focused overwhelmingly on solo arias for the star virtuoso singers. Handel had presented new operas in London for years with great success. One of the major attractions in Handel's operas was the star
castrato Senesino, whose relationship with the composer was often stormy and who eventually left Handel's company to appear with the rival
Opera of the Nobility, set up in 1733. Handel moved to a different theatre,
Covent Garden, and engaged different singers, but there were neither sufficient audience for opera in London nor aristocratic supporters to back two opera houses at once, and both opera companies found themselves in difficulty. In 1737 the Opera of the Nobility collapsed into bankruptcy and what was left of its performers and resources combined with Handel's Covent Garden opera company, which returned to the
King's Theatre, Haymarket, where his earlier operas had been presented. None of Handel's three new operas in the 1736-37 season repeated the success of his earlier works, and he suffered a breakdown in his health, as reported by his friend
Lord Shaftesbury: "Great fatigue and disappointment, affected him so much, that he was this Spring struck with the Palsy, which took entirely away, the use of 4 fingers of his right hand; and totally disabled him from Playing: And when the heats of the Summer 1737 came on, the Disorder seemed at times to affect his Understanding." Before composing new operas for the 1737-38 season, Handel went to "take the waters" at
Aix-la Chapelle, where he made a complete recovery, so much so that it seemed to the nuns who operated the spa there to have been a miracle. ==Reception and performance history==